Jack White has played journalist for the day in an interview with Australian actress Cate Blanchett.

When he's not busy slagging us off, he's snaffling up our commissioning budgets, or so it would seem.

The odd couple talked babies, Ophelia and religion in an article appearing in this month's edition of Interview.

Insights abound on White's time-honoured fixation with the chemical impulses underlying love, with the minimalist rocker taking time out to discuss the parameters of erotomania with Blanchett (it's not what you think).

Says White: "Some people consider the way Shakespeare was writing about Ophelia as erotomania - that she was delusional in thinking that Hamlet was in love with her. But I don't think so."

Well, yes. What else?

"...you can only desire something that you've already had in your life."

No, you've lost us now. What's that?

"I think we should all feel lucky and blessed that people are still, in this day and age, getting in their cars with other people and driving to a location..."

Find out whether Jack's really lost the plot, or whether the Quietus has called upon its mastery of the journalistic dark arts to deprive the man of context, here.