Sam Taylor-Wood leads the way out on to the roof terrace of her office-cum-HQ close to the Barbican in London and, to her relief, sees that a table has been set. “I’m afraid food is going to have to be involved,” she says, her right hand tracing the curve of her belly. “If I go somewhere and there’s nothing to eat I turn into a complete and panicking wreck.”
At 43 and seven months pregnant with a baby fathered by her 19-year-old boyfriend, the actor Aaron Johnson, she is currently Britain’s most famous woman-with-child. Their relationship – she the artist-photographer at the heart of the YBA set; he the brooding young lead of her recent debut feature, Nowhere Boy (and currently in UK cinemas as