Smash hit

The pattern is much the same now, even if the stakes are higher than what to put on the B-side of a single. Even with Collins, though, Maxwell doesn’t do pussyfooting. One aspect of his condition is that he can’t bear to hear others swear; to the aphasic, cursing sounds distressingly forceful. She does attempt to limit her expletives or cover her mouth before reaching their final syllable but clearly it’s a losing battle.

She torments him further by discussing the menopause. Collins has always been pathologically squeamish on such subjects, says Maxwell, as the singer clamps his one functioning hand to his ear to block out any further discussion of hot flushes: “Every couple develops its own private language, even more so when you’re in business together,” she says. “We’ve just had to develop an additional private language based around Edwyn’s illness.

“We don’t finish each others’ sentences, though I do start a few of Edwyn’s.”

You can’t help wondering what might have become of the relationship had Collins not suffered his emergency. By 2005 Collins had entered a quieter spell, though he was still respected by critics. The global success of his single A Girl Like You a decade earlier had secured him an enviable degree of independence, funding the foundation of his own studio, putting him close to the bracket of those who need never work again.

“Looking back, we didn’t socialise very much,” says Maxwell. “Edwyn wasn’t touring, he’d been studio-bound for years. He’d work in the studio till two in the morning. So we became like ships in the night, we were on completely different time frames.”

“And I liked brandy and beer,” Collins interjects. “I liked alcohol a lot.”

Collins was also concealing from Maxwell his growing reliance on painkillers.

As wry and literate as his songs, though, Collins was never one for full-scale rock excess; instead he became hooked on the non-prescription Solpadeine: “He was very secretive about his Solpadeine use, he had packets hidden all over the house and in the studio. He was extremely grumpy, but I put that down to the age he was at. He was tetchy and bad-tempered, and it was all to do with the headaches.”

“I don’t get headaches any more,” says Collins.

He’d last had a GP during his teenage years when he’d lived in Bearsden but was obliged to see a doctor for insurance purposes. He was told he had a touch of high blood pressure and put on beta-blockers. Five years later the blood pressure was subjecting Collins to crippling headaches: “It’s difficult for me to think back to those days because we were living parallel lives,” says Maxwell. “I didn’t like going out with Edwyn socially because he got drunk and a bit nasty so quickly and easily, and always bringing loads of people home at the end of the night. It just wasn’t a pleasant experience to be around Edwyn.”

She remembers how the couple’s son Will, then 15, became known as the Health and Safety Officer for his efforts in ensuring his drunken father didn’t endanger their house. When Collins came home and had gone to bed, Will would rise and inspect each room. The singer’s speciality was burning toast. “Will didn’t trust Edwyn, he didn’t trust him at all,” says Maxwell. “Eventually I said to Edwyn, you’re not nice to be around and I’m not bothered one way or another. It’s just so strange now to think I could have said anything like that to Edwyn. Life is so different.”

Now 19, Will has remained a staunch teetotaller. Maxwell believes her son understands something Collins once knew but forgot, particularly in the wake of the success of A Girl Like You: that the male Collins line is made up of hopeless drinkers. “No tolerance at all,” Maxwell scoffs.

“Things skip generations, I hope,” Collins says. “Maybe Will won’t one day have a stroke.”

“It’s one of the few good things to have come out of all this,” Maxwell reflects, “that Will is incredibly happy he never has to see his dad drunk again.”

Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins by Grace Maxwell is published by Ebury Press, £16.99

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