Cocker has already said that what he admires about the subjects of his films is their lack of self-consciousness

Cocker has already said that what he admires about the subjects of his films is their lack of self-consciousness, and I am struck by the opposite quality in him – by a kind of pained solipsism which seems to have erected, at least on the afternoon we meet, an impenetrable barrier between himself and other people. As though he has said more than he intended, Cocker abruptly closes up “I don’t want to talk about it. When I tried to do it, I didn’t become famous, not for a long time. So the thing that kept me going must have been rather different.” Fame, disillusionment, the identification with outsiders suggested by the films: this is the most interesting area we have got into and I ask another question about what drives him.

But Cocker’s discovery about celebrity – “beyond a certain level it gets quite painful” – must have come as shock for someone who has been so ambitious since childhood.”I was obsessed with it I always wanted to be in a band. Is this why I did it?” He is eager to distance himself from other well-known travellers with their own TV series; he is not, he points out engagingly, “some Tory prick on a train”. People who like to talk about themselves and how brilliant they are. He agrees that becoming a celebrity, after a long period of obscurity, made life uncomfortable. “The thing about becoming successful is you kind of think to yourself: did you do it for money? So you could have this car? Especially when you come across so many idiots socially.

Then, going off at a tangent, he adds: “Everybody should be free to express themselves Artists don’t feel different emotions to everybody else They might be able to express them Their life is lived at the same emotional pitch. Probably there is a higher emotional pitch on a council estate than in a salon because in a way it’s all you’ve got.” Although Cocker’s manner of speaking tends to be flat, his hands are jumpy and rarely still, a circumstance only partly explained by his revelation that he has recently given up smoking.I ask him whether his decision to make films about Outsider Art could be interpreted as a rejection of the extraordinary fame which overtook him three and a half years ago. For a moment he relaxes and we are almost having a conversation, then the shutter comes down again; most of the time he seems ill at ease, as though the interview is a prison sentence he has agreed to serve and he can barely wait for his release He seems to be not so much bored as in a state of endurance. What comes across, in an uncomfortable 75 minutes, is a kind of muted misanthropy whose origins seem hidden and personal.”You can’t force people to express themselves,” he observes of the Frenchman who kept him standing in the rain. It may also be, however, as I felt several times during the encounter, that he is talking obliquely about himself.Occasionally something sparks his interest and he looks directly at me, his face transformed, but it does not happen often. When he says he is trying to watch less television and I tell him I have given my set away, he seems genuinely interested, wanting to compare our experiences of watching it as children.

“We won’t be publishing the addresses [of the artists] on the Internet,” he protests. “If people try hard enough they will be able to find them out. It wouldn’t be appropriate to have Thomas Cook guided tours.” One of the houses he filmed has already been used for fashion shoots, he reveals regretfully, adding: “Everything gets appropriated.” For all his self-deprecation, Cocker is not unacquainted with theory, with the abstract aspects of art. He is resistant to analysis, protesting that he is not academic and insisting that his function in the series is little more than to be “a walking ruler”, there to provide an idea of the scale of the projects.He is also savvy enough to appreciate that the programmes run the risk of turning outsiders into insiders, that the stubborn personal vision he admires could easily become the next big thing – just as Pulp did in the summer of 1995, after years in the wilderness. Why is he so edgy? I have already assured the publicist that I am not going to ask anything about his private life – I am not interested in who he sleeps with – and I have no idea why the atmosphere is so frosty.I am wondering about his aesthetic sense, whether there is anything beyond an indifference to external influence and fashionable trends which draws him to the eccentric, obsessive artists in his films. From the moment he climbs the stairs to the office where I am waiting with his publicist, he is uncommunicative, even a bit aggressive.

He thinks we have arrived early, demanding to know what time we were supposed to meet “Two-thirty,” says the publicist “What time is it now?”Cocker scowls. “Two twenty-eight.”On the way to the restaurant, Cocker strides ahead, talking to the publicist as I struggle to match his pace. In the restaurant he sits down, removes his long knitted scarf and woolly hat, finds a space for the battered plastic suitcase and carrier bags he has unaccountably brought with him, and waits for the interview to commence. Remember the moment at the Brit Awards, three years ago, when Cocker leapt to his feet, mooned at Michael Jackson and became an instant national treasure? That unpremeditated act secured his reputation as not just a working-class hero from Sheffield but a scourge of pretension in a most stellar form. Witty, gifted, impulsive, Cocker seemed like a breath of fresh air in the pop industry – which is why I am unprepared for the dour, withdrawn figure who arrives for this interview. But I still think that the initial thing that sparks a work of art off should be a real event.”This seems a rather prescriptive view from someone whose own image is anti-establishment and iconoclastic. Obviously it’s become a lot more complicated now because things like telly and photographs can do that kind of revelation.