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Jay Kay's Buckinghamshire manor house is 500 years old. It lies in 72 acres of land. His home has a man-made lake in the garden and was once owned by an Archbishop Of Canterbury. Parked outside are a gleaming black Ferrari and a grey James Bond-style Aston Martin. It's the classic rock star scenario, Mick and Marianne at Stargroves and John and Yoko in Tittenhurst Park all over again.
However, if the trappings of success may have changed little over the decades the world of the pop star has. Whilst for the 60s generation the obligatory country mansion mockingly symbolised the power and limitless horizons of a young new aristocracy, for the stars of the 90s the reality is more mundane. In Kay's case the house seems less a temple of hedonism than the biggest available symbol of security.
The truth is that, like so many jobs in the 90s, pop superstardom has become a short-term contract with only ever bigger-selling albums keeping the show on the road. Today's pop gods come with an in-built awareness of their own clay feet and a generational sense of caution. As Kay himself puts it: `It's like a cricket ball rolling on grass. You know it has to stop.' In Jamiroquai's case it's safe to say the ball will not stop rolling just yet. The group's last album, Travelling Without Moving, sold a million copies in the UK and a further seven or so around the world. In addition, Kay picked up a Grammy and four prestigious MTV awards for the video to the group's Virtual Insanity. Last summer Deeper Underground, from the soundtrack of Godzilla, shot straight in at number one.
Simply put, from being the last refugees of the acid jazz movement, Jamiroquai are now in the George Michael league of success. A newspaper table of young entertainers recently estimated Kay's personal fortune at pounds 15m. But the singer himself refutes this figure. `Fifteen million. I was just looking at it wondering, who's got the rest? Somebody somewhere's got a new holiday home,' he says.
Despite all the changes, the public persona of the 29-year-old Kay has remained static. To most of those who fall outside Jamiroqual's fan base he simply remains the same jazz funking...