Its international success remains unparalleled in French recording history, with worldwide sales in excess of 15 million The single went to number one in charts all over the world. "I think it's better to have conflict, or, if you have a parent who dies, you grieve, but the feeling of absence is very difficult to fill, and it took me a while to absorb that," he says.Jarre studied at the Conservatoire de Paris and then at the GRM (Groupement de Recherche Musicale), which offered courses in contemporary and experimental music. He went on to compose music for films, and songs for a number of singers, including Fran?se Hardy. When Jarre junior was five, his parents split up and his father moved to America. Jarre lived with his mother in a small flat in the suburbs of Paris "My father and I never really achieved a real relationship We probably saw each other 20 or 25 times in our lifetime. When you are able, at my age, to count the times you have seen your father, it says something."While the pair are now in regular contact by phone, his father's sudden withdrawal clearly had a deep effect on Jarre.

Rampling once remarked: "It is not uncommon for a man to have an affair, or even for a woman to have an affair But the way I found out! In the tabloids It was demeaning And then for it to have continued. No, I could not forgive that at the time.")Jarre was born in Lyon, the son of Maurice Jarre, the Oscar-winning composer of film soundtracks. It has affected me from a moral and personal point of view."Was he going to marry Adjani? "No Absolutely not. It was absolutely not my intention, it was something that was entirely fabricated." So, why does he think she did it? "I don't know, it's a crazy thing to do. I don't know - for publicity? I've been really shocked by all this, frankly."While he happily admits to being in the throes of a love affair with Parillaud, he insists that she is "not linked at all with the problem I've got with Isabelle": "I met her after the decision was made of splitting and that it couldn't work. I'm very happy with this new relationship and I don't intend to change every year or two, I'm not structured in that way. I take the relationship with Anne very seriously, and she does, too."And how would he answer the charge made by Adjani that he was unfaithful to Charlotte? "Ask Charlotte," he says and smiles.

"[Adjani] is talking about things that she doesn't know, and she wanted, in a rather obsessive way, to create a club [of women to whom he has been unfaithful], but that's not my story and that's not Charlotte's story." (In fact, Jarre and Rampling divorced following Jarre's affair with a younger woman. But as soon as I bring up what he refers to as the "saga of the summer", Jarre, who was in London working on his album when the story broke, makes a sudden move for a bottle of Volvic and takes a swig."For me, it's an absolute non-event because I had been with her [Isabelle] for a year and a half and, for six months already, we were more or less separated," he says, maintaining his sangfroid. I don't feel guilty of anything because we are not married, we have no kids, it's the most banal story you can imagine. "She involved the mother of my children, Charlotte, and we were all shocked, my kids, my parents All that really makes me sad, more or less.

Dressed in a worn stripy top and battered jeans, he invites me to sit next to him on the sofa, settles himself in and puts an arm across his slight frame, perhaps as a subconscious protection, although his manner is, initially, friendly. He is strikingly handsome au naturel, not yet done up for the photographer by his make-up artist, who straightens his shaggy dark hair and applies conspicuous eyeliner. It was made on the instructions of Hitler by the designer Jean Perzel, seized by the French Resistance (of which Jarre's mother was an active member), returned to Perzel, and bought for Jarre by Rampling.Jarre looks incredibly youthful for a man who turns 56 tomorrow. The most remarkable item in the room is a glass bust of Beethoven with his hair standing on end, which lights up. The modern living space has white walls and a magnolia carpet, and the only furniture is the sofa, a black coffee table, three Perspex chairs and wooden shelving.