It may come as some surprise, given his youthful reputation for rock‘n’roll excess and hard living, but these days Nick Cave lives a life of quiet order and industry. Gone are the late nights and the drug-fuelled dissipation – they’ve been replaced by a stable work routine. Waking at 6am, he spends the morning listening to music, reading and the like, before heading off around midday to his office-cum-studio down near Chelsea Harbour, where he works on his writing until 6pm, when he returns home. He doesn’t normally play music in the office, he explains, other than the songs he works at on the Steinway baby grand in the middle of the room: this is a work environment, not a playroom.
 When I arrive, the photographer is finishing up, and the room seems a crowded mess, a haphazard clutter of people and stuff. When everybody else has gone, the room still seems a mess, with overflowing boxes piled up in the corners, shelves groaning with books, rubbish strewn everywhere and a sleigh-bed base divorced from its mattress, which leans against a wall, supporting a painting.
 “This isn’t a place that people visit,” he mumbles apologetically, “it’s where I come to work, on my own.” The clues, as they saw on Through The Keyhole, are there: the piano supports a thick sheaf of songs-in-progress, and the desk in front of the window is half-hidden under piles of books, a typewriter and an iMac, which one suspects he employs sparingly: he is not a man for modern gadgets, or much else of the modern world, one suspects.