THE LEAFY AVENUES of the posh part of Notting Hill may seem an unlikely place to find a character like Pete Bums, but there's no mistaking that you've come to the right front door. NEVER MIND THE DOG, says the sign, BEWARE OF THE OWNER!
Inside, the place is decorated with stylish simplicity and taste - white walls, large churchwindow-shaped mirrors, black leather furniture and leopard-skin carpet. The owner himself looks great - sweeping in wearing a fabulous two-piece of grey jacket and long skirt printed with a large-scale portrait of Garbo, and with a look pitched somewhere between Cher and Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. If not exactly mellow, this seems a changed Pete Burns somehow less uptight, defensive, insecure.
But why are we here in such expensive surroundings? Isn't Pete Bums supposed to be a washed-up disco has-been? And what's this business about a comeback - calling himself International Chrysis, releasing a cover version of David Bowie's Rebel Rebel, and on PWL of all labels? Isn't that a bit, well, desperate?
More of that later, but first a bit of history. Dead Or Alive's star waned in Britain with a series of progressively less interesting albums. III-equipped to deal with the pressures of sudden fame, and increasingly at odds with his record company Epic, Burns nevertheless held a trump card - Japan. There, Dead Or Alive were astronomically popular, so much so that even Michael Jackson had to put back the date for his Tokyo open-air concert to avoid clashing with a Bums & Co show across the city.

However disappointing to fans in Britain, the albums were Bums' ticket to Japan, where he could command a cool 1£ million for just four shows. Despite the life of relative peace and obscurity such money allowed him to lead back in Britain, Bums got bored playing to an audience who might not get the point of what he was about. In an attempt to please the record company, he took on new American managers and embarked on a US tour with backing tapes and back-up dancers. Badly organised, the tour was an unmitigated disaster and Bums grew to hate what Dead Or Alive -symbolised by the now-hated eye-patch - stood for.
The tour also gave Bums his first exposure to Aids on the American scale. All appearances to the contrary, Pete Bums is actually a sensitive soul -never more so than on this issue. His naïve attempts to help - first by giving his own earnings and then by recording a bootleg of torch songs whose proceeds were to go to the sufferers - were abused or frustrated, leaving Bums in greater distress.

The cumulative effect of all this was to send Bums into, literally, an international crisis. On the flight home, he developed disabling physical symptoms (feared at first to be multiple sclerosis but later diagnosed as a nervous.' breakdown) followed by deep depression "the darkest hole I've ever been in". The death of a friend from AIDS, followed by that of his own mother, whom he had nursed through cancer, only made matters worse.

Many months later, Bums roused himself and slowly pulled himself back together again. With a reserve of energy built up while his exhausted partners had struggled to cope, Burns now turned into "a complete self-centred swine", moving out into a hotel, going out to clubs, living the high life. There was even talk of divorce from his long-suffering wife.

Eventually Burns came back to earth and so the story arrives at the present day. With exercise equipment and a gymnasium in the house, studies in nutrition and other therapies under his belt, Pete Bums is a noticeably more relaxed and tolerant individual.
"I'm in the process of shedding old skins," he enthuses. "The chip on my shoulder is another one of them. I still get really grouchy, I can still say really bitchy things and I chainsmoke, but I actually feel much better as a human being than I've ever felt in my life. It's definitely changed my character and my view on things, I take things a lot more lightly. If they'd asked me to do Pop Quiz a few years ago I'd have gone: 'What! How dare they?!!' Now I think it's a hoot."

Meanwhile, drummer and companion Steve Coy has taken over the management and, having extricated the band from Epic, has signed them to PWL. Far from being Pete Waterman's puppets however, the band have complete artistic freedom. Rebel Rebel is their own work - something Bums is keen to point out. "If they think it's shit after all that, that's fine, but as long as they know I'm responsible."

But controversy has already reared its head. Burns, annoyed by Bowie's "laziness" at writing only two verses and repeating the first, wrote a third verse and sent it to Bowie's management for approval Back came the message that Bowie would rather they didn't do the song at all. Now TV programmers are wary about the accompanying video, a fast-moving, inyour-face, cartoonish affair which shows Burns playing four different band members, inspired by icons from Johnny Thunders to Dusty Springfield. Not for the first time, much of the humour is being taken at face value. People still have a lot of misconceptions about Pete Bums.
"I'm not stupid - I don't feel the need to screw myself up the bum with a dildo on Top of the Pops for god's sake. But certain people think that that is my slant. People have a Memory of me for being famous, but they're not quite sure what for. All they know is that fame was snatched away from me, so I must have committed some heinous crime against the media, or children, or... But I never did anything shocking."

You got the record number of complaints for Top of the Pops!
"I didn't! I got complaints about my bloody bulge when I did That's The Way I Like It. Divine got the record number of complaints - I was extremely jealous about that! But no, obviously people thought I was disgusting and I got into bitching matches with people like Boy George and his mother and stuff like that. The thing is, if you're good at retaliating, people don't like you for it, because they know you've got the prizefighter's punch."

But what if this record is not a hit? Won't he then look like a desperate has-been? Typically, Bums has his own highly individual slant.
"You're only a has-been when you give up! I'd love another hit record - but I'd love a flop as well. I don't want to have this thing where you have a number one and then everything's downhill. That was the main thing about You Spin Me Round that made me very unhappy. Everything after it, in the eyes of the record company and the management was a failure.
"But I can't take it that seriously anymore. I never really took it seriously for the reasons people thought I did. They thought 1 was fame-hungry. Well, 1 hated the fame part of it. But now 1 realise that, if the worst comes to the worst and you're famous, you can always get in free and steal the peanuts and drink the champagne! That can happen, but 1 haven't sold my hole for rock'n'roll, and I really don't think 1 will.".

So who does he see as the competition the boy bands?
"I wouldn't like anyone to see me as competing with the likes of Take That or East 17. Not that that's a bad thing - it ain't my market. I can't think of who is going to buy my record. Whoever likes it, buys it. There's no rules."

What does he think of Take That?
"I don't think about Take That. I've only just become aware of who Take That are, because of the sheer volume of all the things they put out. Somebody showed me a Take That live video - I was having a look at what was going on, which was against everything I said I'd do. I can actually say, from what I can judge, they're really very good. But you know what astounded me? They're on stage, nearly in the nude like the Chippendales, and they get teddy bears thrown at them! I'd want knickers! I'd be gutted if I'd spent as long in the gym and spent as much money on bronzer if I just got teddy bears, because I'd want panties, pantyliners, g-strings, men flashing in the front row... It must be a funny dilemma to be in.
"Try as you might to lump me in with these dance acts, I have got some ingredient that they haven't got. I do think I deserve some kind of innings - I want to be in the window display as well - I'm sort of the kooky sweater in C&A. I'm the weird string vest with a pin in it. I hope the powers that be realise I'm not the most vile human being that's walked the earth - I'm sure I'd pick up an old lady out of the gutter without stealing her handbag, you know?"

But the powers that be aren't the only ones making assumptions about Pete Bums. There's the subject of his sexuality, for example.
"I don't categorise myself as straight, gay or bisexual: it's whoever or whatever at the time. I'm not sitting on any fences but I don't feel like an active gay person looking for a boyfriend, or an active straight person looking for a girlfriend. As far as I'm concerned, I'm really lucky I don't have that problem.
"Believe me - my state [when younger] left me confused. On one hand, I thought I like David Bowie and I like a bit of eye shadow so I must be a queer. Then I think, oh hold on, I like that woman, she's really nice. But I like that fella as well. The big change in my life was seeing David Bowie doing Starman on Lift Off with Ayshea, when he put his arm round Mick Ronson. I had a genuine confusion over what gender I was supposed to be, because I knew I loved make-up and female accoutrements but I didn't wanna be a woman. I didn't want female genitalia.
"I've always been completely open. Sometimes when I'm dressing up I'll think fucking bell, I've thrown all the rules out of the window and I don't look like a man. So I'll do something - I always have to have the contradiction, even if it's only in my head. Like I would never wear stockings and suspenders and high heels - if I was going to wear high heels I'd wear it with a man's suit. I like the contradictions. I like that fact that I've got tattoos. I like the fact I've got muscles. I'm very happy with all that. I'd be highly alarmed if I suddenly sprouted breasts or had to have a vagina, because it's not something that I want.
"In the time of the gender-benders, it was a fashion thing. Well, it's gone out of fashion, and I'm still standing, so it must have some deeper connotation. It was never a fashion for me, it never will be - it's a natural state of being.
"I've been very lucky in my unique situation. I've fallen in love with men and I've fallen in love with women - no problem. And they've fallen in love right back, so it's great. I've never had that heart-yearning thing of moping around after some muscle boy. Homosexuality to me is not even a sexual issue - I've never really had to suffer those issues."

Not even when you were harassed on the street and workmen threw dirt at you and called you queer?
"It's nothing to do with homosexuality -it's just looking peculiar. People just say things because they don't know what else to say. Obviously I look like I'm desperate for attention or approval on the street - or at least that's the way workmen think I think. They think I really want them to think I'm a girl and wanna shag me, and they just feel they have to shout abuse and it's nothing to do with the sexual issue. They're just led to believe that anything unusual must be a queer. But a queer doesn't mean stick it up your bum - queer's just queer because it's odd. So I've never been a victim of that over sexual issues, so I don't feel militant about it. I think that's as destructive as Garry Bushell is - you know when they are like 'we're gay and fuck you, straights!' I read a magazine at somebody's flat - I can't remember the name of the journalist - but he was writing an article that was just as heterophobic as Bushell is homophobic.
"I know that the gay population make assumptions about somebody like me, because a lot of them are like little old women, gossiping over garden fences. Their assumptions are completely wrong, but they're more vocal, because they're loud and they're funny and they'll crack a joke so you'll hear it. I've been seen out with people -because 1 know male models - and people think: oh my god, Pete must be sleeping with him. Well, 1 wish! But the gossip goes round, so 1 do hear the rumours. They're all wrong but it doesn't bother me.
"I'd love to see somebody where my pants just go squib on the floor but it doesn't happen. When it does, the world will be the first to know about it! But I got to know everybody who I've ever been involved with before they got to play my piano. Because you hang your bum out, it doesn't mean you want someone to stick something in it. And it doesn't mean you want anyone to touch it - I don't mind people looking but don't touch. It's like saying every woman that wears a miniskirt is asking to be raped. But I don't even think that people like me get the same sort of sympathy."

So what kind of impression of himself does he think will be created by the video?
"Well, I'm not going to come across as normal. What's Rebel Rebel about? What I do there and what I do here are two very very different things. The only artist I can think of off the cuff is Madonna and I'm sure that she doesn't roll around squelching her tits every time she hears Like A Virgin at home. It's an act. It's something that you project, and it's also what people want to see. What am 1 trying to portray? I've got a good sense. of humour, I know that's what I'm trying to portray.
"I do have a real liking for people who go on telly and shock the nation, because I've never done it but I'm treated as though I have. So in a way they're committing the sins 1 never got to commit. I'm too sensible now to commit them but it's sort of like voyeuristic pleasure."

How much do you think you take after your mother?
"She was what most people would term eccentric but now I've had time to think about her, she was actually really sane. She manufactured her own reality; she didn't want to fit into everybody else's. She knew what was going on out there, and she made her choice. I feel like that. 1 know what's going on out there - quite a lot of it isn't for me, so this is my reality. I don't throw parties here, and people are not invited here either. It's a private part of me. This is where I can really be myself."

And how would you describe that self? What points would you like to get over about yourself`? Pete Bums, what are you like?
"I'm somebody who believes in what they do, and I've got to the point and the age where I will carry on doing what 1 want regardless, and if someone is going to try and rain on my parade I'm not going to shrug and give up, or go home defeated in any way - be it musically, socially, or sexually."

("ATTITUDE", by LAN CRANNA)