Dolly Parton believes terms such as bisexual, pansexual, and gender fluid have become “fashionable”

She said: “For me, I’m still an old timer. Sometimes I think it’s just become kind of fashionable to speak out like that. I think some of them even say more than who they really are.

“I think they just want to be part of that whole movement to make people think that they’re so free and all that. But I don’t really know how they feel inside. I know how I feel inside.”

The ‘9 to 5’ hitmaker’s own goddaughter Miley Cyrus identifies as both gender fluid and pansexual, but Dolly thinks the 26-year-old singer does things “for effect”.

She added: “Miley, she does a lot of stuff for effect, and I think a lot of them do.”

Dolly, meanwhile, has been married to her husband Carl Dean since 1966, and couldn’t imagine her life any other way.

She said: “He’s a good man. It is a true love story and he’s my best buddy — he’s crazy, he’s funny,” she says. So I think laughter has been a big part of our relationship. We both have a lot of fun.

“And we’re not in the same business — he doesn’t care about that. He’s pretty much a homebody, loves staying around home. We live out on a farm. He likes to mow the fields and work on his tractors.”

And although a hysterectomy when Dolly was 36 took away the couple’s chance to start a family of their own, the ‘Jolene’ singer says she doesn’t mind not having children as it’s allowed her to focus on her career.

Speaking to The Dan Wootton Interview podcast, she said: “I look at everything like it happened the way that it was supposed to. I’m pretty sure if I’d had kids I would not have done as much. I always think, ‘Well, maybe God didn’t mean for me to have ¬children, so everybody’s children could be mine.’”