Whitney Houston is back. Her album, My Love Is Your Love, released late last year, was her first all-new studio record for eight years. She's in the midst of her first world tour for five years, is in Britain this month, and ends her odyssey next month in Vienna.

She's adopted a whole new look for this global trek. The gauche teenager with faded jeans and a cascade of bouncy cuils has matured into a slinky seductress with an asymmetrical bob and copious Dolce & Gabbana wardrobe, from halter tops and pedal pushers (for the funkier numbers), to full-on, diaphanous, hand-embroidered, Oscar-style frocks (for her trademark surging ballads). In short, she's embraced divahood. "Though, to me, being a diva doesn't mean being difficult," she says sweetly. "It means you're the cream of your crop."

In truth, when it comes to Whitney, the sublime and the ridiculous have always coexisted in the public mind. At 36, the Voice has sold 100 million records, with songs that have become standards, such as "The Greatest Love Of All" and "I Will Always Love You" (the latter with the dubious distinction of being the most-palyed song at weddings and funerals). For many, she's already up there with those other all-time greats Dionne Warwick (her cousin) and Aretha Franklin (her godmother). The Bodyguard and The Preacher's Wife made her a bona fide movie star. But she's also become known as an impossible princess. The hissy fits are legendary, from arriving two hours late at a White House dinner honouring Nelson Mandela "I just got off tour," she shrugged), to taking her own washing machines to South Africa, to insisting that her hotel suites be hosed down with bottled mineral water. [FYI- unsubstantiated. Never heard these last two items in my life.]

However, with the release of her latest album, a new element has entered the equation: respect. She's roped in some of the brightest Young Turks of the American R&B and hip hop scenes, including the Fugees' Wyclef Jean and rapper Missy Elliott, to add a gritty, urban sheen. And while the lyrics to songs such as 'It's Not Right But It's Okay,' full of world-weary allusions to deceit and disappointment, are widely regarded as comments on her marriage to wayward former teen star Bobby Brown and the pressure of living in the spotlight, on the record at least, she denies that there's any trouble between her and her husband. "We are growing together, you know. We've gotten past all the madness and really got to know each other. After seven years we're still waking up to each other and that's nice."

In fact, she credits brown with inspiring her change in musical direction. "He said, 'There's a whole new world out there that you've got to deal with and it's called hip-hop." So I called my executive assistant Robyn [Whitney, like all superstars worth their salt, has a small army of assistants and 'people'], and said, 'I need you to beat the streets and bring me the best of the bunch.' So we got Missy, Wyclef, Lauryn Hill. But really, this is where I come from. I was born in the projects and I know that life. I just never really sang about it before."

The person who knows most about Whitney and where she came from is her mother, Cissy, the grande dame of the Houston family. When I spoke to her at her New Jersey, her memories of Whitney as a precociously talented youngster were clear and unsentimental. According to Cissy, Whitney always knew what she wanted. "Right from the word go, she was trying on my wigs and high-heeled shoes." Cissy, one of the world's foremost gospel singers and occassional backing vocalist for Dionne and Aretha, sometimes took the young Whitney on tour with her. "She loved it because she was treated like a little queen. She heard all these amazing voices, and if that doesn't inspire you, I don't know what will." (Whitney alludes to these formative experiences in "I Learned From The Best," a saccharine tribute that's set to be her next single.) [Note: It sounds like the writer hasn't heard ILFTB yet.]

Cissy says that Whitney had another role model. "She wanted to be as famous as Michael Jackson. She'd say, 'Mom, one day i'll buy you a house and you'll never have to work again.' I'd say, 'Sure, hon." But around the age of 11 she really started to show some promise, and I put her in the chior of our local Baptist church." Through her teens Whitney blossomed, in terms of both her looks and her voice, becoming a part0time model after an agent spotted her on the street and doing sessions for the likes of Luther Vandross. At 18, she was 'discovered' by Clive Davis, president of Arista Records.

"I saw her do two songs in her mother's act in a club in New York," he recalls. "I was stunned by the range of her voice [she had a five-octave armoury even then] and her beauty. I signed her as soon as I could." Davis continues to be a mentor, and is surprisingly frank about how he helped steer her career; it was at his urging that she interrupted her film career to make her new album. "I said to her, 'Come back and do what you do best."'

Davis' confidence in his protege was borne out in 1985 when her self-titled first album, including 'The Greatest Love Of All,' became the best-selling female solo debut, shifting 14 million copies. But she was ill-prepared for overnight success. "I don't think she realised what the pressures would be like," says Cissy. "I remember one day when she was on tour in London about ten years ago, the press was at her and she was at her wits' end, really crying. I held her hand and told her that God was good and she had to hold on to that. I think it pulled her through, but she hit so hard and so fast, and I couldn't be there for her all the time because I had my own obligations. There were lots of late-night phone calls and prayers. Now she knows her profession, but I don't think she's particularly worldly-wise. She needs people close to her to look out for her."

One area that Whitney's 'people' couldn't prevent coming under excruciating scrutiny was the vexed question of her sexuality. She'd been hotly pursued by Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro, but it was widely rumoured that her only intimate relationship was with a long-term female friend. "I never wanted to dignify those rumours by responding to them," she says now. But she produced an emphatic response of sorts by marrying Bobby Brown, six years her junior, in 1992. The former New Edition star already had three children by two different women and, as Whitney's career soared while his declined, the stories piled up: he'd hit Whitney in a 'hotel brawl'; he faced charges of aggravated assault and disorderly conduct in Florida for allegedly almost tearing off a man's ear; he was charged with sexual battery after an alleged attack on a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel; he checked into the Betty Ford Clinic, reportedly to battle drink, drug and sex addictions (though he claimed his sabbatical was purely 'to clear my mind'). "Sometimes,' Whitney fretted, 'I just want to tum Bobby over my knee and spank him like a naughty child." But despite their 'ups and downs', they have split up only once, in 1997, and only for a month. "We just wanted to get away and think about things," she says. "Now we're stronger than ever."

I ask Cissy what she had thought of Bobby as a prospective son-in-law, and the temperature discernibly drops. 'There was some trepidation, for sure, but it was her choice and she thought he could make her happy. I did what all mothers do; I sat her down and tried to show her the pros and cons, but ultimately it was her choice. I prayed a lot," she adds.

What of the fist-fight stories? "Look, I'm not with her all the time, but I know he's not what they say he is. He doesn't beat her or stuff like that because she just wouldn't put up with it. If there's bad things in the press I call her and get the real story. But I don't see or hear from her as much as I'd like to these days. She's committed to her husband," Cissy sighs, "and I guess I understand that."

There's one thing they all agree on, however: the resplendence of Bobbi Kristina, Whitney and Bobby's six-year-old daughter. She has already appeared on stage with her mother, shrieking at audiences to "clap your hands!" She can also be heard on 'My Love Is Your Love.' "She is real strong-willed," marvels Whitney. "She just said, 'All right Mommy, I want to sing a song with you.' So I left her [in the recording studio] so she wouldn't be intimidated. When I came back, Wyclef, who was producing the track, was just slumped over the mixing desk going, 'Oh God, oh God.' Apparently they were arguing about how she should say her piece. At the end of the song she says, 'I said the record is not over yet.' And that's her saying, 'Don't turn me off 'cos I'm not done with this.' Wyclef was worn out by this little girl."

There may be alarming signs of a precocity problem but Whitney stresses that she's a hands-on mum: "Part of the reason for the long lay-off was that I wanted the family to come first. I am very maternal. I go to school plays, I do the car pool, I go to kindergarten picnics. Yes, she's doing stuff with me, but I'm trying to keep her feet on the ground, too, like my mother did with me."

Whitney once said that she recalled her mother crying when she left her children to go on tour, and that she would take any children she had on the road with her. Sadly, the European leg of her current trek coincides with Bobbi Kristlna starting first grade, but it seems she'll be left in capable hands. "Oh, Bobbi will have a fit," laughs Cissy. "She adores her mother and that's where she wants to be. But I'll try and spend a lot more time with her. She's her mother's daughter all right; she loves that limelight. I think to myself sometimes, "Here we go again..."'

As to whether Bobbi Kristina can expect any brothers or sisters, Whitney, who has had a series of miscarriages, concedes that she'd like a little boy, muttering that she and Bobby are "working on it. But it's tough, because my husband says I don't sit still long enough." Indeed, her immediate schedule is a little crowded: in the autumn she starts work on a movie with Will Smith, a romantic comedy called Anything For You. "It'll be interesting," she muses. "I mean, when was the last time you saw two African-Americans doing a romantic comedy together?"

In the meantime, there's her reinvigorated passion for music. Her US concerts drew delirious notices. Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds, the writer-producer who first worked with her in 1990, gives me his assessment of her new direction:
"I wouldn't say she was losing it before, but maybe she was getting a little too mainstream and Celine Dion-y. People are delighted that she's moving into new musical areas. They can hear that she's in better voice than she's ever been. They also know she's been through a lot and come out the other side. They were waitlng for an excuse to fall in love with her all over again."

The love thing, according to Whitney, is mutual. "Being on stage is the best feeling in the world," she gushes. "I'm purposefully playing smaller venues so I can have the contact. I want the audience to see what I'm wearing. I want them to look in my eyes and see my happiness and my pain. I want them to see all this stuff because, in the end," she concludes, flashing her eyes in quintessential diva style, "that's what it's all about."