Before signing a major-label record deal, we did what we wanted, taking our cue from Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler: ‘If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.’ But guided by the sensible A&R staff at Warners, we somehow found ourselves under-doing things. It didn’t help that Dan and Ed adopted a jobsworth mentality curiously at odds with performing in a cock-rock outfit. If only they’d remembered that old adage, ‘You should never forget where you come from’ – in our case, eggs hatched from a spaceship that had been sexually assaulted by a pterodactyl.*

Sadly, but inevitably, our sense of fun became inversely proportional to the amount we got paid. It’s uncanny how that happens, no matter how much you enjoy your vocation: it somehow turns into a ‘chore’ when you’re on the payroll.

The most ingenious creative ideas arrive unexpectedly in bunches of three, just like triplets. We knew that we desperately wanted to arrive at the Brits 2004 in a combine harvester. Harvest festivals and music award ceremonies are both steeped in national pride, with rosettes for the biggest vegetables, so it seemed pretty apt. But we also fancied a bit of Jack and the Beanstalk tossed in, allowing Justin to scale said stalk for a fairytale finale. Thirdly, a sprinkling of The Wizard Of Oz would allow the four of us uncanny caricatures: Justin as Dorothy, Dan as the scared Lion, myself as the Tin Man and Ed as the Scarecrow. It would be a collage of three disparate themes, if you like.

Noel Gallagher inadvertently inspired all this malarkey with a slagging off: ‘The Darkness, weird fucking cunts! Show us what you can do without a 20-foot fucking vegetable waving around behind you.’ He was getting us mixed up with The Flaming Lips, of course, but, we thought, why not turn his words into a self-fulfilling prophecy? It was a nice idea: four weird cunts and a 20-foot fucking vegetable – or in our case, an 80-foot fucking beanstalk.

As it turned out, costs, logistics and corporate music industry politics got in the way and we ended up downsizing with an aquatic Neptune theme instead. To the delight of our record company and management, we succeeded in being wet, unoriginal and cost efficient.

It was frustrating when the best ideas weren’t pursued. We had lots of best ideas. ‘Gulliver I Shrunk The Thunderdrome’ became the working brief for our proposed ‘Love Is A Feeling’ video, after I suggested a storyline that incorporated Gulliver’s Travels, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and Mad Max:Beyond Thunderdome. (Another threesome.) We planned to film it in between dates on the Big Day Out tour in Australia. It would involve The Darkness spaceship, shrunken to the dimensions of a toy, crash-landing on a suburban lawn in the middle of an Aussie barbecue before being terrorised by a giant kangaroo.

The record company, however, insisted on us doing a clichéd Guns N’ Roses homage specifically geared towards the American market – all manicured poses atop a cliff as helicopters buzzed overhead. My Scottish side found it especially excruciating to watch the results of this vainglorious exercise – all that waste! It was like watching expensive paint dry. Of course, Atlantic Records were more than happy to lavish funds on unimaginative  ideas. Memo to busy rock bands: never relinquish creative control to your A&R man.

In the event, the single was not even released in the States and the video only succeeded in making the British public think we’d become self-righteous wankers way too big for our snakeskin boots – we’d started doing things ‘properly’, and being a ‘proper’ cock-rock band just meant you were a proper cock.

But the best unfulfilled idea was ‘The Arse de Triomphe’, what you might call our French ‘Stonehenge’. (If you don’t get it, try a DVD of Spinal Tap.) This stage plan would involve the band making an entrance through a giant plastic female posterior. The buttocks would literally part for us to emerge. What could be better than a massive fibreglass lady’s bottom that opens? But yet again a great idea somehow lost its initial impetus and never saw the light of day. Miserly management and sensible record company execs were slowly strangling the life out of us. And somehow we had gone from being OTT glam-metal pranksters to being ‘yes men’ who underdid what we did and overdid what we didn’t do.

* Our genesis as enacted in the ‘Growing On Me’ video.