It’s easy to imagine Juliette as a little girl, sitting at the side of an immense stage like some sorcerer’s apprentice with stars in her eyes, soaking up the sheer magic of music-hall. Scuttling around the stage the morning after the show, she darts back and forth, scooping up emeralds, diamonds and pearls "all fake, all plastic, of course!" she laughs now. But at the time young Juliette was on a quest to find "the glittering Eldorado that had fallen off the Lido girls’ costumes" the night before. She stored her booty in her little tin box, "a pirate’s treasure chest" which contained a thousand backstage hopes and dreams and, even in the shabbiest of dressing-rooms, "that peculiar desire to get out there on stage and put on your act."

Juliette’s tin box eventually got mislaid, but its symbol lived on in her imagination, exerting a powerful pull over the years. And now Juliette, that ‘grande dame’ of contemporary French chanson, has metaphorically opened her treasure chest and strung her beads of memory together. The image of songs as jewels is an appropriate one in Juliette’s case as she has a reputation for working with the painstaking care of a master craftsman, chiselling and polishing her songs to perfection. "I like to think that what you sketch out when you’re doing the first rough draft of a song is just that, she says, "something that’s far from being the finished product!"

Juliette’s latest offering, Bijoux et babioles, is a riot of colours and emotions, a glittering firework display of her songwriting talent where laughter can turn into sadness at the change of a chord and where sensitive ballads about painful emotions run smoothly into showstopping numbers filled with raucous humour. All of the songs on Bijoux et babioles, even the comic turns, are set to the most carefully-crafted orchestrations. And the magic works throughout, Juliette’s "pocket operas" turning us all into wide-eyed children again, ready to marvel at the antics of white rabbits running round pink libraries as our heroine wanders off the beaten track, adding a dose of Peruvian ballad here, a hint of hip hop there and a decent slug of fine French wine into the final mix.

Juliette dazzles her listeners to the point where we are willing to suspend all disbelief and accept artifice as reality. And she is refreshingly humble about her art. "Occasionally," she admits, "there’s an exception to the rule, but in general I don’t believe a song has the power to change the world. Songs are simple entertainment, not to be taken too seriously at all." At the same time, Juliette has never conformed to the showbiz mould, establishing herself as an alternative, anti-establishment figure in this increasingly "bling-bling" world. For her, the mere act of going out on stage is an act of faith. "You don’t end up as a singer just by chance," she insists, "Getting out there on stage is always an act charged with meaning."

Writing songs is an equally meaningful act in Juliette’s universe. On La jeune fille et le tigre (The young girl and the tiger), a colourful adventure inspired by an American short story, Juliette recounts the story of a cruel and bloody love affair which revolves around the essential question: "Do I love him enough? Then I’ll let him go. Do I love him too much? Then I’ll let him die."  "It all depends on where you choose to place the camera," Juliette says, "Personally, I like to zoom in from the side and take a bit of an original angle. You have to try and find a different angle otherwise we’d all be singing the same song all the time. After all, there aren’t a million different themes to write songs about!"

Citing Bernard Werber, the author of Fourmis, the ‘chanteuse’ insists that, "You have to learn to think differently." But she was willing to abandon her commitment to oblique references and obscure angles on one song on her new album, the gloriously direct and explicit Aller sans retour, a song about exile, immigration and buying a one-way ticket to the unknown. "The fate of all these modern-day immigrants is really heartbreaking,"  the singer says, "I feel proud to have written a song like this and taken my idea all the way."

On her new album, Juliette opens her treasured tin box and invites fans to try her songs on to see what suits them best. (Incidentally, she says that when she presents a new song to her musicians they like to joke, "Don’t know about this one. We’ll have to try it on for size!") "The thing is," she says, "a song takes on its own life away from the person who created it. It has to be able to exist all by itself in another context.  Songs can provoke powerful reactions in the listener. They can call up memories form the past, transmit emotions and operate as a sort of soundtrack to a decisive moment or an important encounter in someone’s life. Certain songs become a sort of talisman and end up changing someone’s life in some way. But that all happens independently of me!"

Despite her nonchalant exterior, Juliette is an artist willing to put herself on the line for her art. Songwriting, she says, is a constant battle "between me and myself." No coincidence then that on the kitsch-style album cover to Bijoux et babioles it is difficult to say whether Juliette is leading her circus tiger or whether the tiger is in charge. "There’s a notion of danger and risk-taking in this art," she says, "It’s a question of life or death - even for the juggler! If he drops one of his clubs, he’s got to pick it up and keep on going until he gets his act right. And it’s the same for me, I can’t afford to fall off the highwire in front of an audience. I’m always trying to put on the best show possible and achieve perfection and precision in my work."

Like an energetic ringmistress leading what she refers to as her "troupe" - a full entourage of lighting technicians, sound engineers and six musicians playing 72 instruments - Juliette steps fearlessly into the ring. And her marvellous Bijoux et babioles are guaranteed to set her audience’s eyes glittering with amazement. This is one show that comes highly recommended indeed!