He arrives looking every inch a Glastonbury-dwelling hippie in a faded

He arrives looking every inch a Glastonbury-dwelling hippie, in a faded patchwork jacket, a pair of threadbare corduroys and some happy-clappy Christian shoes. He hasn’t shaved in days, and the hair on top of his head is doing whatever the hell it likes, often in several different directions at once. He looks both older and younger than his 31 years: the crows’ feet are pronounced, but the sparkle in his eyes is youthful, and somehow catches all available light and throws it back at you.”I’m fucking knackered,” is the first thing he says, but he says it with a sense of celebration that almost suggests he is happy to be back in the public eye. Who knows? As a consummate contrary bugger, perhaps he secretly is.Rice doesn’t usually do interviews. His celebrity fans included US talk-show host David Letterman and pop star Britney Spears. The Financial Times, of all newspapers, branded him “extraordinary”, and he was on first-name terms with Julia Roberts.

And then there was that other actress, the Bridget Jones one, with whom he was reputedly intimate…”It was all very strange,” he admits. So strange, that by the end of last year, its cumulative effects had become somewhat harmful “I was absolutely wrecked, and I had to take a break So I did But I didn’t know what to do with myself. But over the course of the next three years, it became a genuine word-of-mouth phenomenon, going triple-platinum in the UK, and shifting close to two million copies around the rest of the world. In 2001, by now back in Ireland and with money lent to him by his film-composer cousin David Arnold, he wrote, recorded and produced O, an unusually intimate and stirring album, which he confidently expected would sell no more than 1,000 copies. But, you know,” he shrugs, “I didn’t want to fight over it.”By this stage in its unexpectedly enduring life, O had given Rice many reasons to fight, and with many people: those within his record company, his management team, and even his own band.

As Closer revived public interest in him, he says, gravely, “I had had enough.”This, it transpires, was actually fairly typical behaviour for Damien Rice. Six years earlier, just as his first band, Juniper, were on the brink of big success in their native Ireland, he abruptly quit and fled to Tuscany to live off the land and grow his own vegetables. Later, he ambled around Europe busking on street corners, an act which filled him with more simple pleasures than playing Irish enormodomes ever could. “The album had done enough, it had already been TV-advertised, and I didn’t want it to be again I wanted it to be stopped altogether. But the singer, something of a contrary bugger at the best of times, is far from happy.”I wish we hadn’t jumped on the back of that particular bandwagon,” Damien Rice tells me now, over a plate of chopped and diced Thai vegetables on a balmy June night Even a year on, the frustration still smarts. Coming the other way, in inexplicable slow motion, is a man, crumpled but still handsome in his unironed suit.

Amid the bustle of weary commuters shines a vibrant young woman whose hair is acting as if it’s in a shampoo commercial. The film does wonders at the box-office, while the album from which the song is lifted, O – already two years old and on its last commercial legs – enjoys a 100-per-cent sales resurgence The record company, much as you would expect, is ecstatic. Flatten the accelerator and the Z’s gutsy 3.5-litre V6 fills its Lance Armstrong lungs, and begins, lazily at first, then with a cumulative urgency, to reel in the horizon, furlongs at a time. A busy London street, early morning. Think of it as like having a silent, invisible Chris Moyles (the best kind, I find) in the passenger seat all the time: the additional load gives the dampers something more to work against and, consequently, ruts and potholes that might cause other soft tops to judder and wobble are steamrollered to oblivion – well, almost.If power corrupts, after a few miles in a 350Z convertible you’ll be invading oil-rich dictatorships on the flimsiest of pretexts Bribing the traffic cops ought to be a cinch.. It is licence-threateningly addictive.The extra 100kg or so used to strengthen the convertible’s chassis costs it some straight-line speed compared to the coup?half a second off the 0-60mph time), but the extra weight helps make it feel more confidently planted on the road. Though the opening is narrow, the boot is deep and there is space for the obligatory golf bag and, anyway, there isn’t all that much room in the back of the coup?ecause of the dirty great strengthening cross-brace that takes up most of its luggage space (which, interestingly, the convertible seems to manage without).