It was April 2004 and we were in LA for five days, manfully attempting to squeeze in the Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel TV shows, two nights performing sell-out concerts at the Henry Fonda Theater, three in-store album-signing sessions at Virgin, K Mart and Best Buy, a heap of radio and magazine interviews, hobnobbing with the likes of Dave Grohl, Steve Coogan and Jack Black, visits to The Roxy (DJ: ‘And you’ll never guess what crazy shit’s going down! Those Darkness guys just walked in!’) and the infamous Viper Room, not to mention various record-company meetings. And all under the beady gaze of a documentary crew from ITV’s The South Bank Show, who accompanied us for much of the three-week stateside jaunt.

‘Meet and Greets’, or ‘Grip and Grins’ as we called them, lurked around every corner, and those wishing to remain successful were expected to partake. It was hard to believe that many people could be involved in the planning, packaging, marketing and selling of our so-called product – one measly album. It seems global corporate consumerism only functions properly if everyone agrees to be phoney.

‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ had been the most-played video on American MTV for two consecutive weeks earlier in the month and we were, according to the Sun, the fastest-growing UK band in the USA since The Spice Girls. To commemorate this, they’d mocked up a picture of the world-famous girl band with our heads superimposed on to their bodies – but they’d got it all wrong. They had pie-loving Ed as ‘Sporty’, gentle Dan as ‘Scary’, darts-loving Justin as ‘Posh’ and myself – by far the most ‘mature’ band member – as ‘Baby’. Ed reckoned they should have used ‘Old Spice’ for me, making me instinctively sniff my armpits in a moment of BO paranoia.

My brother Chris (a rare combination of the mystic and the man of action) had come over from Venezuela to party, along with his partner Ada and trusty sidekick Brendan. And artist Jonathan Gent was crashing on the sofa in my L-shaped Mondrian suite. They crammed in as much of LA as they could in a Pontiac convertible Chris had hired to cruise around in and I joined them whenever possible.

We visited a swanky Italian restaurant owned by Robert De Niro after somehow finding ourselves in a lesbian cocktail bar, before heading to the most exclusive nightclub in West Hollywood. In fact, it was so exclusive that if I told you what it was called I’d have to commit suicide, certain in the knowledge that it was only a matter of hours before I was to be assassinated.

We planned to leave the Henry Fonda Theater aftershow party to head to this VIP mecca, but not before I’d committed another ‘Frankie Faux Pas’ – a term coined by my increasingly irked bandmates to signify another instance of my putting my foot in it. I recognised a distinctive and familiar snow-white jet of hair and an enigmatic, immobile face: it was the film director Jim Jarmusch. But what was he doing at a Darkness concert? I set about bending his ear, reasoning that a man who leaves so many on-screen mysteries dangling in mid-air, unresolved, might perhaps care to explain what he was thinking of. In the process, I completely ignored the hairy mountain of a man he was with.

My bass tech Stuart then pulled me aside to say, ‘That’s the producer who wants to do your next album; you should talk to him.’

Regarding the long hair, shaggy beard and general bear-like demeanour, I jumped to conclusions and addressed him as Arthur Baker, telling him how much I liked the work he’d done with New Order and Afrika Bambaataa. In fact, it turned out to be none other than Rick Rubin, the metal maestro of all he surveys, who’d produced Justin’s heroes AC/DC and had come to see if we were up to scratch. I got the impression the mix-up had pricked his ego, or more likely he just didn’t warm to me.

Now, as it stands this isn’t a great anecdote, but fast forward almost a year to the London launch party for Live Aid the DVD, and I somehow managed to commit that very same faux pas the other way round – this time talking to Arthur Baker thinking that he was Rick Rubin, telling him how much we admired his back catalogue, his rock credentials and how much we’d love to work with him. Being famous for fusing Afro beats and pioneering queer-core disco, Arthur Baker would have been forgiven for thinking The Darkness had gone mad. Which, incidentally, they had, but we’ll come to that in due course.

At least I did one thing right, introducing the surprisingly shy Tilda Swinton to the even more timid Jarmusch. The upshot of that encounter was that they worked together on the movie Broken Flowers – not that you’ll see me mentioned in the credits, but that’s Hollywood for you.

Brother Chris had been going on all day about this exclusive club we just had to see, telling us it was like ‘one massive VIP room’, which only started me wondering how much rope and how many bouncers you’d need to cordon off all those egos. When we arrived, it looked like any other popular nightclub: hundreds of desperate fools competing to gain entry. I always felt guilty jumping the queue at moments like this – it was against my Marxist principles. Of course, it didn’t prevent me going into the club, albeit with a guilt chimp on my back. Later, I was glad I’d given my political beliefs the night off, since a certain A-list actress seemingly fell for me at first sight, as I’ll explain if you’ll bear with me…

Our entourage had been shown to a booth, where we promptly ordered several bottles of vodka and necked some Hollywood Ecstasy. To our right, an emaciated 78-year-old Hugh Hefner was spreading his attentions around a harem of eight leggy beauties. Meanwhile, several miles away, the rest of the band were smoothing things over with Lemmy from Motörhead (Justin had called him ‘a wart-faced cunt’ and banned him from our gig – he’d wanted to do a song with support act The Wildhearts – after he’d said we were a cabaret band who should be performing on Wigan Pier.)

Back in the VIP club, Leigh Francis (a.k.a. Avid Merrion of Bo’Selecta! fame) made his introductions and told me there was someone I should meet. She was a blonde girl with high cheekbones, piercing green eyes and a backless dress that served to highlight her only visible blemish – a scrawny back. Still, that was plenty of blemishes less than me. And there was something strangely familiar about her too, a striking resemblance to my girlfriend Katrine, which left me momentarily saddened, as our three-and-a-half-year relationship was at that time hitting the rocks.

‘YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!’ She was American, that was a cert. And she had great taste in music! As we yelled into each other’s ears, I couldn’t help but notice the attention we were getting, from her friends and mine. Then Jonny Gent sidled up and told me I was talking to the actress Kirsten Dunst.

I remembered watching The Virgin Suicides three years previously and being amazed at how similar this actress was to my then new girlfriend. I was a struggling musician at the time, penniless but in love. Now here I was, three years later, with my girlfriend’s doppelganger Kirsten Dunst. Somebody should put an end to gorgeous nymphets raising the hopes of paranoid, ugly guys.

She grabbed my hand and mumbled into my ear. I tried to resist – out of respect for Katrine – but her grip was tight. Finally, her friends left and she went with them. The night had ended with no actual transgressions, thank God – I was still in a relationship and she had a scrawny back anyway – but I somehow sensed, in an Ecstasy-fuelled premonition, that the writing was on the wall regarding my girlfriend and the band.