I ask Polly about studying art, and about her admiration for the work of Andres Serrano, the New York-based artist who got notoriety by suspending a plastic crucifix in a glass of his own urine. Following on from Piss Christ, there’s been a trend for artists such as Kiki Smith and Marc Quinn to devote themselves to making art from bodily fluids.

It’s not really a stretching point to see this trend in Polly’s songs, in ‘Dry’ for example, which is about her vaginal/emotional aridity, or on the excoriating ‘Rub ’Til It Bleeds’. So is she consciously echoing this stuff?

“Well, the last thing I saw was in New York. I went to see the Serrano exhibition of morgue photos. They made you feel a lot of things – one minute I’d feel really horrified and appalled and the next minute I’d think, this isn’t working at all, this looks really staged and I don’t feel anything for these people.

“He’s just done loads of ‘cum’ pictures. Do you find things like that really turn your stomach? I never feel physically sick by things like that, and I wonder if it’s because I’ve had to deliver lambs and stuff, when I was younger. I used to ring all the lamb’s tails and ring the testicles. I’d clear up dead lambs when they came out in bits – because sometimes they’d decompose inside the sheep and you’d’ take them out bit by bit. And I wonder if it’s hardened my stomach to things like that.”

Does it stop you getting sentimental?

“Yeah, it does.”

She remained as enthusiastic about the contemporary art scene as ever, expressing a particular admiration for the artist Bruce Nauman. “I find him very funny” she told Interview magazine “and that always appeals to me - that kind of balancing of heavy subjects. One of my favourite pieces of his is just two lines of writing. The top line says RUN FROM FEAR and the bottom line says FUN FROM REAR. That’s my kind of humour.”