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Ennis has enjoyed an outstanding year

We are parked in an upstairs room session at the in her home town of Sheffield, overlooking the indoor track where much of the hard work that won her world gold was done. "This is where I'm most comfortable, training," she says. "I only have one day off a week, so we've been really careful.

"It's great having new sponsors, but you have to make sure you have time to just rest and recover and do nothing. I've found it really hard recently, because most of my rest days I've been doing things. And there's all the little things, like going to the bank, going to the post office - stupid things like that.

"You've got no time during the week to do it, so that's the only time you have - but then you're on your feet all day and you're not resting at all. And I do love just being at home with my tracksuit bottoms on, or my pj's, just lying on the sofa and doing nothing."

Her new legion of fans does not end with the mothers of R&B singers. When in Berlin, a certain was rumoured to be extremely keen on his fellow world champion. How does it feel to be fancied by the fastest man who ever lived? And what does her long-term boyfriend Andy think about it?

Ennis laughs unashamedly. "Some men can be a bit jealous with their girlfriends, but Andy's very good. He knows that I have to go away, sometimes for three or four weeks, surrounded by nice athletes who are half-naked, that sort of thing..."

She laughs uproariously again. "He's really into sport, he watches everything and he plays a bit of football, but he's never done any athletics. He actually thinks it's really easy. We do hill runs in the park every other Sunday, so he was going to come and do that, but he wimped out because it was raining. There's no way could he do it. He'd absolutely die."

Ennis had strict rules in place during the Worlds. While there was competing to be done, Andy had to find other company and somewhere else to sleep. You don't become the best in the world by being sentimental.

"There was no way I was going to allow him to stay with me! You've got that routine before a competition where you go to a training camp and you're on your own - having your partner there would just add to the distractions.

"I spoke to him on the phone, and he was like, can I come and see you, and I just said no way. But he's fine - he came out to watch with his three elder brothers, so they all went out in Berlin and had a good time."

Does she ever pull rank after a long training session, lie on that favourite sofa and insist that Andy does the cooking? "I try that - 'I trained hard today!' - but it doesn't wash. He works really long hours, so we share things. Whoever gets home first does the cooking.

"I'm actually really glad he's not an athlete. If I've had a bad session or something I can just talk at him, and then that's it - we can get on with our evening and talk about something else. If we were both athletes, how could we ever get away from it?

"You have to be quite selfish, and you're always thinking about how your event's gone and how training has been - it would be quite difficult if you were both like that."

Ennis is full of smiles, but there's no mistaking the fierce competitive drive within. She can still barely believe she pulled it off in Berlin ("You always expect something to go wrong along the way") and she will certainly not be resting on her laurels.

"Everyone was like, do you feel satisfied now you're world champion? I'm only 23. This is the start of my career. I've got so much more to achieve.

"I get really competitive with myself. When I'm doing hurdles sessions Chel (coach Toni Minichiello) has a lovely colourful spreadsheet of all the times I've run from different sessions, all the splits between the different hurdles, so I just love seeing how it compares. If I'm a bit down, that gees me up for running quicker.

"I'm not a bad loser - I just like to win. It might be a few of us trying to remember the name of a celebrity - I'll get it first, and I'll be like, YES! It's like I've won a gold medal. Or cooking - I have to be the best cook. If you're ill, I have to have been iller."

, Olympic heptathlon champion in Athens, once revealed the reason she did heptathlon because it was so much fun. With seven events to train for, there wasn't the time to be bored.

"It does suit my personality," admits Ennis. "I'm always trying to do something, or lots of things at once. It's hard because you concentrate on one event, get it right and then start worrying about another event that isn't going so well - they never all go right together. But I can't imagine just doing one event. Just being a 100m sprinter - I'd just get so bored. I know you've got your weights and your conditioning, your drills, but compared to heptathlon it's very simple."

What about the hours of brutal training, the six days a week, three hours-plus a day? Multi-eventers do have a lot of fun, but they have to be prepared to hurt. While my own laughable efforts are in no way comparable, I'll never forget the pain of that training session with Daley Thompson as long as I live.

"I hate the 800m training sessions - hate them," agrees Ennis. "They're horrible. I moan about them for the whole day leading up to them. But you feel so much better afterwards - well, you feel awful, but the sense of achievement is great.

"That lactic feeling is awful, though. I've never been sick after a training session, ever, but I get that feeling. I can feel it coming up, but I hate being sick so I just hold it - 'Get back down!'"

Her relationship with Minichiello is a key part of her success. Watching the pair of them working together, you're struck by the knowing blend of hard technical work and knockabout banter. A poster in of Ennis drawn as Superwoman becomes the focus of five minutes mickey-taking, a series of plyometric drills refocuses the mind.

"It's much better like that. Before it used to be , you do this, you do that, do it this way with no deviation from what I say', but now he's coached me for such a long time he knows I hate that way of coaching. So now I might question a session he puts together, and he'll explain it to me, and I'll be okay, fair enough."

Who has the final say? There is a pause. "He would. I'd argue it, but he'd say, do it, do it, and I'd feel bad if I didn't do it, feel like I wasn't training properly. I'd give in."

The big training aims this winter are her long-jump - working on that new left-foot take-off - her shot, and the javelin, courtesy of former world bronze medallist Mick Hill. No matter what Daley might have done, however, there'll be no training on Christmas Day.

"Chel wants me to train, but I won't - I have one rest day a week, so why not make it Christmas Day? I love Christmas - it'll be nice not having to get all horrible and sweaty, get dressed nicely, go and see my family, open lots of presents."

Turkey, mince pies, all the trimmings? "Oh yeah." She laughs again. "Absolutely everything."