In 1997, at least three pop generations ago, Kylie Minogue sat in a hotel bar in west London and padded her hands around in a state of advanced anxiety. “If there was something here I could destroy I’d be quietly ripping it up,” she said, eyes darting round the table. “Is that nerves or something worse? I want to be very clear about who I am...but I’m not!”

These were the IndieKylie Years, the bewildering episode where she made a highly confused album that was going to be called Impossible Princess (until a certain thing happened in a tunnel in Paris). She made it with some dance boffins (Brothers In Rhythm) and some art-rock boffins (Manic Street Preachers) and announced to the world, “all I know is this feels closest to the core of myself” as three copies were sold worldwide to a Neighbours nostalgist in Brisbane.

We forget, now, that Kylie wasn’t always “Kylie”, that it took right up until 2000 and the Spinning Around golden hot-pants Moment for Kylie to realise what “Kylie” was all about, which is to say, glitter-ball fab-pop fantasy. Kylie, back in ‘97, was in a persistent state of embarrassment over what she called “my past” (her pure-pop PWL years where she was creatively “knee deep in concrete”), while notable people around her persistently, as she put it, “embraced my past” (Bono, Pet Shop Boys, Bobby Gillespie, lifetime slavering fan-boy Nick Cave). Her was a spectacular example of just long it takes to form your true identity whether you’re a millionaire human pop-trinket, or not.

“I’m still trying to find a way of expressing myself,” she mused, aged 29. We played a game that day called PopKylie Vs IndieKylie to find out, once and for all, whose side she was truly on. “Oh God,” she said, dubiously, “the Indie Richter Scale.”

First 7” inch single bought. “A Jackson Five. Or Grease. Pop!” (Here, she stuck out two tiny fists with one thumb aloft to denote she was taking the Pop/Indie scores…)

Favourite Smiths album. “Pfff! I don’t know any. Pop!”

Most number of days gone without having a bath. “Close to a week. Recently. In Paris. Indie!”

Owner of how many t-shirts with band names on. “Two. Talete from Deee-lite and Bjork.” Pop!

Ever slept in a ditch at the Reading Festival. “I’ve never slept in a ditch or a tent anywhere. Oh God, I’m failing. Fail! Fail!”

Where’s the tattoo? (batters head off table) “I’ve failed!”

You’re looking at this totally the wrong way - you’re not an indie loser, you're a pop winner! (raises famed eyebrow, unconvinced.)

Did you see the Captain Beefheart documentary last night? “Damn, forgot! I got a postcard telling me about it from Anton Corbijn. I’ve heard his music in Anton’s car and it’s fantastic.” Enormous indie!

Complete the following statement: “I just do what I do and...” “A line from a song?” It’s the indie ethos in a sentence. “Oh God. This is very important. I just do what I do and... be!” It’s “I just do what I do and if anyone else likes it that’s a bonus.” “Well, that’s how I would like to feel but unfortunately I also want to be successful. So Kylie goes indie is completely preposterous.”

Where is the Dublin Castle? “This is a trick question. Not Dublin. Don’t know.” Crap live indie rock capsule in Camden Town. “Oh this is going to be such a laugh to the people in your NME office!) Well hello to you all! I’m just not designed for indie, not a sparkle in sight!”

Kylie was then told that Nicky Wire, back in 1991, used to wear a Kylie badge on the lapel of his leather jacket. A PermKylie badge, at that. “Nooo! “ she squealed, “I might cry!” And the sometime late ’80s pop marionette described by the tabloids as “an alien” pointed to the moistening eyeballs of a real-life human being. “I was supposed to be a one-hit wonder,” she blinked, “one smash hit and be gone, like the Reynolds Girls or Big Fun. So to still be here after ten years and have someone like him... I’m just touched.”

Eleven years on from then and at this year’s NME Awards the Manics won God-Like Genius while Kylie – despite just not being designed for indie – won ‘Sexist Woman’ at the age of almost 40, as her 49th single, Wow, twirled effortlessly into the Top 5. “Sparkle, joy, dreams,” she told me last October, “I think that’s my purpose.” She got there, perhaps as we all do, in the end.