Professor Green is uncompromising.

“If I don’t like something, I won’t do it,“ he says in a level tone. “I won’t do anything I don’t want to do. I don’t work with people I don’t get on with. I don’t waste my time on them, I’m nearly 30, I’m bored of that nonsense.
 

“I’m not a conformist. It might sound selfish, but I think making music is selfish. I’ve got where I am just by making music that I enjoy. I won’t ever change that.“
 

I am speaking to the 29-year-old Hackney-born rapper ahead of his Watford Colosseum date and he doesn’t appear to be in the best of moods. 
 

It’s about a month since he was hit by a delivery van on his way to a gig, which left him bed-bound with a broken leg. Ironically the incident occurred almost four years to the day he was almost fatally-stabbed in the neck with a bottle in Shoreditch.
 

“There’s no point crying about it,“ the former drug dealer says gruffly, “but I’ve had enough of the crutches. I can’t carry on walking around like an invalid.
 

“I am thinking of wrapping myself up in cotton wool though.“
 

He’s been told he can’t have Jack Daniels on his rider anymore because he’s allergic to malt, but that doesn‘t bother him, he’s opting for gin instead.
 

So what’s the matter with Professor Green? He’s got a new single out Are You Getting Enough? featuring Miles Kane, and is set to play festivals including Ibiza Rocks and Glastonbury.
 

He’s also doing a series of intimate gigs, “which is really nice“, he says, in Guildford, Southend and Watford.
 

Perhaps it’s to do with the recent altercation he had with a member of the paparazzi – when a photographer allegedly tried to take a picture up the skirt of his fiancée, Made In Chelsea star Millie Mackintosh.
 

Undoubtedly he’s sensitive about the issue, his PR has asked me to refrain from questions about his other half and her television show, but he does address the matter.
 

“If I wasn’t on crutches, I’d have been done for ABH, I’d have ******* knocked him out,“ he says, matter-of-factly. “You know, he ran away, I’ve never seen so much smoke come from someone’s feet.
 

“Most paps are quite nice, but there are some who are always trying to provoke you. When someone does that to a woman, I just don’t understand it, it’s an offence, it’s sexual harassment.
 

“Trying to get a picture up someone’s skirt? It’s not like she was getting into a car, or so drunk she didn’t know to maintain her modesty, she was walking out of a club. People need to learn to be decent. Doing that to women? It’s just not alright.“
 

Born Stephen Manderson to teenage parents who split shortly before his birth, his evident respect for women could be down to the fact that he was raised mainly by his grandmother Patricia and great-grandmother Edie.
 

And his music, which is somewhat free of hackneyed hip-hop misogyny, is largely autobiographical.
 

After his father Peter committed suicide in 2008, Stephen talked about his death in the song Goodnight from the album Alive Till I’m Dead and about the problems with his family in Read All About It from the album At Your Inconvenience.
 

His latest album, Growing Up in Public, is set to be released later this year. He says will focus less on how he’s feeling.
 

“I’ve got a lot off my chest with the last two albums“, he says. “It’s important for me to make good songs, great songs, and that’s what this album is about.
 

“There will be different moods, different feelings on this album. I like to talk about things, but it’s not all about how I feel, I like to take people on a journey with my music, I like to vary it.
 

“I mean, I don’t know how I’m necessarily feeling at any time. How am I feeling today?
 

“A bit ****** off, my dog’s absolutely trashed the kitchen, that’s not what you want to wake up to in the morning.
 

“But then again, the puppy stayed in her crate and didn’t wee in the kitchen so, you know...“
 

“Swings and roundabouts?“ I interject.
 

“Exactly,“ he laughs. 

Professor Green is at Watford Colosseum, on Tuesday, June 25, at 7.30pm.
 

Details: 0845 075 3993, watfordcolosseum.co.uk