Madonna is pleased she has enraged so many people by adopting a Malawian baby.

The 48-year-old singer has admitted she used to be controversial for the sake of it, but is delighted with the hysteria surrounding her adoption of 13-month-old baby David because it has been sparked by a good deed.

She revealed in an interview with Time magazine: "There is a part of me that is secretly enjoying pissing people off, because I know that when you're pissing people off you're often doing the right thing.

"What I hope I'm doing better now than I used to do is picking the right battles to fight, and not just being provocative for the sake of being provocative."

Madonna also believes the average person doesn't care that she has adopted a Malawian baby and that the media have created all the controversy. She said: "I don't think people really give a s**t.

"But when you throw in things like I'm a celebrity and I somehow got special treatment, or make the implication of kidnapping, it gets mixed into a stew and it sells lots of papers.

"But care? People don't care and the media certainly doesn't care. What they should care about is that there are over a million orphans in Malawi, and following me around is just a gross misappropriation of attention and money.

"It's just kind of a cocktail for disaster in terms of media perception."