A chic restaurant in Mayfair on a packed Friday lunchtime seems a surprising place to meet up with Kelly Osbourne, but here we are anyway, tucked in the corner of Cecconi’s, eating crab ravioli at the “usual table” of Osbourne’s publicist, Gary Farrow. The waiting staff whisper in the corner, and I tell Kelly that I wish we could be somewhere more private. She agrees: “God, I know, I’m not sure why we’re here. The food is so fancy.” But when I suggest doing a runner, she says: “I don’t want to make things complicated. I’m already in trouble with Gary for those pictures after the NME awards.”

The pictures – of her leaving the nightclub Punk with Kate Moss, both of them apparently bladdered – weren’t at all in keeping with this Kelly Osbourne, the 23-year-old following a new game plan carefully designed by Farrow, the veteran celebrity PR who masterminded Paula Yates’s television career.

Or were they? The idea is to cast her as spokesperson for the nation’s youth; a big-mouthed, vulnerable party girl who has been to the dark side but come back; an official agony aunt to famous, troubled friends such as Amy Winehouse. She even has her own phone-in show, Radio 1’s The Surgery on Sunday nights, so teenagers can talk to her directly about their problems.

So, the odd night on the razz isn’t such a disaster. It’s more important that Kelly is a realistic role model than a snow-white one. The message is emphatically positive: that you don’t have to fit any cookie-cutter image of how to dress, think or be; that you can make a mess of your life and get a second chance, even a third one; that when you make peace with yourself, others will, too.

The pictures at the top of the page are a sort of paean to that. Karl Lagerfeld shot them after spotting Kelly on – oh, the endless ironies – Perez Hilton’s salacious gossip website. The pictures were taken during a marathon 9pm-4am session in Lagerfeld’s room at Brown’s Hotel, just before Christmas. “I was so insecure when I first went in,” she says. “He was casting for a show and the models were being fitted. I sat there in a chair thinking, ‘I could not look less like I’m meant to be here.’ The models were saying, ‘Why’s she here?’ and I was thinking, ‘I’m not a model – why am I here?’ ”

The visual narrative is of a woman going through a nervous breakdown. Kelly let Lagerfeld’s team do whatever they wanted to her, without even looking in the mirror. “When I finally did, I couldn’t stop laughing,” she says. “At one point, I had a shoe tied into my hair. I just thought, ‘How many times does Karl Lagerfeld ask to photograph you?’ ” The pictures show not only her creamy beauty, but also a bold lack of vanity. It’s her Britney head-shaving moment – albeit for art, because, in reality, Ms Osbourne seems more together now, not less. Which makes the timing perfect for her to be on stage hosting Style in the City, this magazine’s first live event, taking place over three days at the Birmingham NEC.

“Yes, it’s gonna be good. I get to go to a big gala the day before – they’re sending me all these dresses from a bunch of different designers I work with. Stella McCartney is involved, Trinny and Susannah, Alexander McQueen – really high-end stuff.”

And it’s in Brum, home of her ancestors. “That’s what’s so brilliant, because fashion is everywhere, not just in London, Paris and Milan,” she says. There’s going to be a bus transporting visitors to the different events. “Sipping champagne while being driven around Birmingham city centre – I’d be loving life.”

Like so many girls, Kelly is both comfortable with herself (“I don’t consider myself a genius, but I am street-smart”) and low on self-esteem. She tells me that she cried when she heard she had been given an award for most stylish female telly personality by Elle magazine, and then – gosh – blinks back tears.

“Sorry, but it’s just that I’ve had to work so hard to get people’s respect,” she says. “For so long, people said, ‘She’s a fat, spoilt brat. She’s nothing. Who is this girl?’ I had the reputation that Peaches Geldof has now. I don’t feel I’ve done anything to justify being famous. But my friends say, ‘Stop putting yourself down. You’ve no idea how much you really do.’ ” She recovers. “Of course, I know that I didn’t do anything to be famous other than be born. And they’re 50% right, but I still have to walk through the door that has been opened for me and show that I can do it. That’s harder to do than if I were a nobody. And I did used to think I knew everything. I also hated myself. But you have to make mistakes in order to learn – and I did learn.”

Ordinarily, this would sound like clichéd therapy-speak, but Kelly’s a straight enough shooter not to be annoying. Her story, after all, began because her parents chose to make a television show about their family life. Does that make them as instrumental in her problems as Britney’s mum and Lindsay’s mum, both of whom stand accused of propelling their kids into the spotlight and, once they were there, not protecting them quite as well as perhaps they might have. Kelly has always been adamant that it was her decision, not her parents’, to appear on the show in the first place.

“A lot of people use their children for press,” she says. “I respect Gwyneth Paltrow, because she covers her babies’ faces – she never lets the paparazzi get that picture. I’m not going to put the Spice Girls down, because I’m a fan, but they took their kids on stage at every single show of that last tour. To be a child of three and have 25,000 girls screaming at you – I don’t think that’s necessarily good. But I’m not a mum, what do I know?”

Kelly attributes her current good professional form in part to Mrs O, who is also her manager. “I owe it to my mother that I am able to appreciate my good fortune. She helped me to see that I was being a brat,” she says. “I wasn’t a very nice person, but today, I can say that I am. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I really feel I’ve found my nook here in London. I can go to places and know that somebody will always look after me, because I’ve got friends in squats in Hackney and in castles in Oxfordshire.”

She shares a flat in Maida Vale with a mate and seems to be living as close to a normal life as she has since the day in 2000 when MTV came to tea. “If people can’t have fun, then it’s not worth it. My flatmate and I say to each other, we’re the funest people we know. When we’re bored, we do silly stuff, like going over to Kate’s [Moss] house to play X Factor or charades.”

The spectre of celebs barricading themselves in “Kate’s house” for X Factor sessions is not so odd when you consider the dubious charms of being hot female tabloid fodder in London. “At the NME awards, I was lathered, but I had a great time. It started to go bad when the paps began making horrible comments as we were leaving, to get a reaction. Stuff like, ‘Looks like you’re off the wagon, Kelly. What drug are you on tonight?’, or turning around to one of my girlfriends, who is famous, and calling her a slut.

“I know, when you become famous, you sell your soul to the devil. But it’s dangerous. Look at this bruise – that’s from a cameraman. He slammed his camera on my wrist. It wasn’t his fault, but there were so many, and they were pushing.”

Maybe she needs a protector. There’s no walker in her life at the moment. “Lily Allen said something that was so right. She said, ‘Kelly, I don’t know why you consistently go out with young boys. You won’t find what you’re looking for. Mentally, physically, they don’t understand our lifestyle, they just read about it in magazines.’ I was like, yes! I don’t like old men with saggy balls, but recently, I’ve started to find older men attractive. But it’s hard for me. When I meet someone I genuinely like, they’re usually either gay or they have a wife or girlfriend. And I’m not going to go there.

“At the moment, all I want to do is make people feel comfortable with themselves,” she says. “I’ve been through a lot. Maybe it’s nice having somebody who has come out the other end to talk to.”

And fleetingly, I glimpse the Kelly of the future – a showbiz-conquering Osbourne woman at once steely and kind, as epitomised by her mother. Watch her go.

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