Shirley Manson: I don’t know how much time Garbage has left

When the record label Interscope dropped the band, Manson felt the group was finished – having been told there was no room for the record company to promote more than one female rock band (they are alleged to have selected No Doubt instead).

But against those odds, Garbage have survived and thrived – something Manson hopes resonates with others, whatever their career.

She said: “I was 40 at the time, and I was thinking ‘no woman in alt rock has got out of this situation with her career intact’. I really believed my career was over.

“It has been a great surprise to me, and a delight, to dig myself out of that. I was very wrong about my career, as it turned out. I like to tell this story because I feel so many women run up against a brick wall, where society is telling them they’re too old and it’s all over.

“I want women to understand it’s not over, if you just refuse to sit down.”

The same time period also left Manson feeling isolated as the only woman in an otherwise all-male environment. It’s something she has tried to change since then, with the group’s current bassist Ginger Pooley – formerly of the Smashing Pumpkins – just one of the women the singer has helped bring into the fold.

That includes the support on their current tour, Glasgow group Lucia and the Best Boys, who Shirley refers to as “my wee sister, or my child” with a laugh.

“I didn’t understand that I could say to the band that I needed more women around me, and that has changed over the course of my career,” she explains.

“We have a woman lighting designer, we have a woman selling our merch, we’ve had women as production assistants and we do our very best at this point to change the dynamic.

“That has helped my loneliness immensely. To look across at Ginger during rehearsals and feel that connectedness with someone who understands what I have gone through – that has often moved me to tears.”