Embrace

"We play each other stuff over the phone all the time and when he played me Gravity about two years ago I absolutely loved it.

"Chris thought it was one of the best songs he'd written but said it sounded so much like Embrace that he gave it to us and it's turned out really, really well."

Although Chris Martin has since become globally successful, Danny first met the singer when Coldplay supported Embrace at The Blackpool Express Ballroom back in 2000.

"I'm not too worried about being compared to Coldplay as I think they're a fantastic band," he says. "In fact, I said to Chris after they supported us in Blackpool, 'When we next tour you're going to be too big to support us' - and I was right!"

Danny says that he is over the moon about the birth of Chris' baby daughter Apple, with Gwyneth Paltrow.

And while he split up from his most recent girlfriend almost two years ago, Danny admits he'd love to become a father himself eventually.

But for the moment his energy is well and truly focused on Embrace.

Given the strength of the arguments between the singer and the band's new producer Youth, during the three long months when they were making the album Out Of Nothing, it sounds like he needed every last drop.

"We have practically produced everything ourselves for the past seven years," Danny explains.

"So when we were recording the album it was really hard because of the amount of arguments I was having with Youth - shouting, throwing things, jumping on tables and crying and stuff."

He's quick to point out that the feuding duo have since managed to salvage something from the wreckage to become good friends.

"I've realised that if you allow people to do their jobs then you'll do a lot better.

"All the pain and suffering from the album was worth it in the end because it's easily our best album and if it hadn't have been for Youth it wouldn't have been half as good - the guy's an unpredictable genius."

As well as the strain of making Out Of Nothing, Danny also lives in the shadow of a minor heart condition, diagnosed around 13 years ago, and needs to take beta-blockers to help curb his stress levels.

"I was about 20 when I found out - I thought I was having some kind of panic attack but my heart was going mental and in the kind of job that I'm in with lots of nerves and stress, it's not that easy really," he admits.

"The pills that I take work fine at the moment but I might need to think about having an operation later on in life."

Danny says that he wasn't particularly bothered about the condition until he found out that his friend's mother, who is in her 50s, was taking beta-blockers that were 12 times weaker than the tablets he was prescribed.

He decided there and then to see a hypnotist, "out of desperation really - I didn't have anywhere else to turn," he says quietly, remembering the fear he felt.

"He took me back to a time in my childhood when I was like three and a half and I used to be scared of the dark - I still am a little bit! - and he got me, a 30-year-old man, to sit the child version of myself on my knee and make shadow puppets to show the child that the light and dark could be controlled, like my heart condition.

"It really helped me and that's what Wish 'Em All Away is about," he says abput one of their tracks.

When his younger brother, 31-year-old Richard, who plays guitar for the band, gets worried about Danny's heart condition, the singer says they focus on what's really important to them both - the music.

"Richard and I don't lie to each other - if one of us is unhappy we'll say and it makes for better songs," he smiles.

"We write apart and then we get together and decide how the song is going to work - he's my favourite person in the whole world is Richard."

Embrace are at the Pyramid Centre, Portsmouth on Sunday, November 21. The event is sold out but returned tickets may be available. Box office: 023 9282 4355.