My career path has been stratospheric. At the tender age of ten, I was spotted by a talent scout. At eleven, I had a recording contract with EMI. At thirteen, I had three gold discs, four BAFTAS and a Golden Globe. At fifteen, I launched two global fashion labels and wrote a bestseller, now a major feature film and translated into forty-eight and a half languages. I’m a regular guest on NBC, the BBC and Channel Plus, up for a knighthood and tipped for a Legion d’ Honneur. Just like that.   Not really. I am but a humble…

    Every Monday night in winter, I stand outside in the cold. Not waiting for a train, or a lover, or for a dare. No. It’s because three hundred others need me to.   La Soupe, the charitable kitchen at Paris’s Eglise St. Eustache, feeds that number every night between December and March. I’m honoured to be one of its volunteers. I am neither Christian nor Catholic. Something much stronger draws me here.   As the great bell strikes 6, we’re hard at it behind the cast-iron west gates, shielded from curiosity by sheets of rain-washed chipboard, bathed in…