In early 2003, we were a buzz band on the independent label Must Destroy, looking to break through and achieve commercial success. Justin started working out after being branded ‘a porky Austin Powers lookalike’ and I took to cultivating a pirate headband and scowling onstage demeanour. Late one night at a music-industry party in a Portuguese café near Westbourne Park, I found something to really scowl about, after crossing swords with seven gacked-up gatecrashers – an incident I’ll refer to as ‘Snow White And The Seven Chavs’.

I have a quick temper when people pick on me because, quite frankly, I don’t think it’s fair. That’s my French sense of injustice for you. I pick on myself enough without any help from anyone else. But this went way beyond a ‘pick on’ – I found myself being dragged out to a car park and savagely assaulted by the Seven Chavs high on Snow White, one of whom was probably called Sniffy and presumably there must have been a Snorty in there as well.

It was a bit like the jungle bee attack, but with bottles, glasses and brutal kicks instead of stings. Again, it took me a while to figure out what was happening. What had I done wrong? At least the bees had a proper excuse – in destroying their nest, I had ended their civilisation. It’s not as if I’d ended these guys’ civilisation.

But, mercifully, there was help at hand. A saint was watching over me, and not just any old saint, but a leader of saints: Steve Finan, the manager of girl group All Saints. Steve only got involved because we’d been introduced earlier in the evening, and I’m glad he did, because he happened to be a first dan black belt in Taekwondo.

According to onlookers, what happened next was ‘like something out of a Jackie Chan flick’, as he laid waste to their Burberry asses one by one. In the midst of all this, I’d been dragged into a taxi, bloodied and battered, and was speeding down the Westway with hulking sound engineer Pedro, who’d also battered one of them before carting me away. I felt accountable and wanted to go back but was assured that Steve Finan was OK (though he had, in fact, slipped and gashed his head on the gravel) and, it seemed, the Seven Chavs had disappeared into the night with their Snow White. I’d lost my lucky Scottish thistle pendant, an engraved hip flask (a gift from our then independent record company Must Destroy) and a favourite pin-stripe jacket. Several shades of shit had been knocked out of me, but there was still life to cherish, thanks to this Finan phenomenon.

The next day, I called him and stammered out my thanks. He’d had 22 stitches on the gash above his eye, leaving an unmistakable scar. The guilt burned deep within me. Would he at least allow me to pay for cosmetic surgery? Steve simply laughed and mumbled something about insurance. I had an innate desire to buy this saviour of mine a drink, yet, perversely, whenever we bumped into each other after that it was always an awards bash of some kind where the booze was free. Terrific news for my accountant, but not so good for the old conscience. The Kerrang! Awards, the Mercury Music Prize, the Brits and the Ivor Novellos – we were up for the lot and at each the customary Steve Finan greeting, Action Man scar above his eye, and apologies swatted away like so many bothersome chavs.

Three years later, I was in my chateau (more of which anon) when friends arrived from the UK with a copy of the Sunday Mirror. It was a sweltering summer evening as we sat in the cool stone kitchen drinking Kronenbourg 1664 and listening to Serge Gainsbourg on the radio. Beneath the headline ‘Denise Lewis’s Secret Lover Revealed’, I caught a familiar printed name in the subheading, then immediately recognised the face in the picture. It was Steve Finan again. I’ve heard that they’re an item now, the heroine of British athletics and the hero of this book’s author, and I’m convinced it’s all down to that lucky scar.

Now I know it’s not the end of the world to get into a fight – not if it provides a valuable moral lesson and source of future inspiration. Maybe that’s why people go to war? By doing something stupid – getting the shit kicked out of me – I had unsuspectingly created a platform for the world’s first music-business superhero.