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It took him time to master the art of preserve-making, perhaps because he defines his approach to the creative process as being romantic (emotional, instinctive), rather than classical (disciplined, structured). The results of a first attempt were too runny. Those of a second had set too firm. But David Gray is nothing if not tenacious. On the third go, armed with his gran’s best recipe, he got it right.

Now, it seems, there’s no stopping him. “Look at all that fruit,” he exclaims, early into our march between the wet and wind-lashed hedgerows that lead to his local beach. “I thought it’d be too late in the season, but no. Brilliant! I’ll be out here again tomorrow picking like crazy. Do you know how many blackberries you need [basin-fuls, apparently] to end up with just two little pots of jam?”

The 39-year-old singer-songwriter just can’t stop shooting himself in the foot. On our drive up from London to the north Norfolk coast, he had commented on the spell that certain unnamed other performers seem to cast on the media, being accorded a respect unrelated to their actual talents (and largely, he suspects, as a result of their cartoonishly rock’n’roll lifestyles). “They’re not that gifted but somehow are perceived as being artists and the real deal, whereas I… I realised long ago that I’m simply not cool nor ever will be.” And would he really like to be, I had inquired as we negotiated the Friday morning traffic on the M11? “Well, it’d be nice to be thought of as just a little bit cooler,” he had replied after a moment’s consideration. Yet just two short hours later, he’s swooning over soft fruit.

“The smell when it all starts to heat in the pan is so vivid that it’s like a colour,” he says, striding on towards a Norfolk Wildlife Trust visitor centre (his membership of which organisation, his familiarity with its staff representatives and his enthusiasm for birdwatching being the three final nails in the coffin of his hip quotient). “Never mind baking bread or brewing coffee. If you want to sell your house, make bramble jam when people come to view.” Which is advice we’re unlikely to get from Pete Doherty, you’ll agree. Not that Gray covets the lives or tabloid infamy of some of his younger peers. But it would probably bruise him a little to know that when I typed in his name at amazon.co.uk, up popped the suggestion that I might also be interested in releases by Dido and James Blunt.

It’s the extent of his popularity that has landed him in such rich but unfashionable company. No matter that his breakthrough album White Ladder was his fourth (self-financed and released initially on his own small label), or that it struggled to gain attention here, doing so only after becoming an unexpected hit in Ireland. What has shaped our lasting perceptions of Gray is that in time it became ubiquitous – played everywhere, an aural wallpaper. Yes, with good reason, for the musicality and conviction it displayed were in short supply on the charts of 2000 and 2001. But you can have too much even of a good thing, and as a result his currency became devalued. In the media, his name all but became shorthand for the earnest, urban thirtysomething demographic that is his principal fan base.

Odd, no doubt, (and highly irritating) to find yourself stereotyped in such cavalier fashion, but there are compensations. I first met Gray in 2001 when White Ladder had taken off but the full scale of its success had yet to be revealed. In demeanour and attitude, he was still very much shaped by earlier struggles, appearing diffident and already a little overwhelmed. His look was ordinary bloke-ish: trainers, jeans, a sheepskin coat. Today, though, he is urbane, relaxed and expensively dressed. He has family homes in Hampstead and on the Norfolk coast, and we are travelling from one to the other in his Lexus. Other earnest, urban thirtysomethings should be so lucky, for his is a lifestyle millions of them aspire to. “I’ve finally got my smile back,” he’d told me early in the journey.

Quite when it had been misplaced is hard to say. “I’ve long had the tendency to take things too seriously, myself included. Yes, it was completely lovely when, after years of angst and frustration and of putting out records to total indifference, my career took off so emphatically. The warmth of the crowds, their obvious affection for my work… It was all I’d dreamed of. But the minute I realised

I had made it [White Ladder’s success was global, the US included] and finally had the light turned on me, I realised I didn’t like it or any of the trappings of success. Inside this man I’m just a shy little boy, so at awards ceremonies I felt like I was on my first day at a new school. Instead of relishing the fact that I was finally being allowed into the winners’ circle, I felt alienated and alone.”

Fatigue and this strange sense of disenchantment were not all he had to deal with. It was during this same period that his father, Peter, died of cancer, aged 59. “All I can say is that at least he got to see things happen for me. He was absolutely delighted and anything but shy about telling other people. ‘Look!’ he’d say. ‘That’s my son at Number One! Beat that!’ It was like he’d won out among his peers.”

Then, in the summer of 2002, Gray and his lawyer wife Olivia had the first of their two daughters, Ivy (sister Florence is two and a half). “When you’re married your partner has every right to feel like they’re the top priority in your life, but for a while that just wasn’t the case,” he considers. “This new world I had been catapulted into was eating me up. I was being pulled from pillar to post.”

Adjusting to their new circumstances (the couple married 14 years ago) took time. “It’s been a bumpy ride. You feel guilty about having so much. But we’ve found our way through it to a point where we’re now a lot more relaxed. There’s more humour, more piss-taking and we’re feeling OK about it all.” Gray says he has never been good at putting time into friendships. “And suddenly you’re in a completely different position to your peers, which takes some adjusting to for everyone. The main thing is that you can’t talk about money any more. It’d just be insulting to people getting by on a fraction of what you now have. But what are you supposed to do? Get a new set of mates to go on holiday with? Only mix with those who can afford the same things as you can? I haven’t worked it out.”

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