Phil Collins went "hell for leather" working on a song for Adele

He said: "Adele approached me and in my dark years when I didn't really pay much attention to what was going on, when I was drinking myself to death. I didn't know who Adele was so she called me and asked me if I wanted to write to her ... She'd had two albums out by this point and sold billions of records.

"She was lovely, we met in London and she gave me a piece of music to finish which I went hell for leather to finish but then she got a bit difficult to find and then it was because she had just had a baby and it was a little bit early I read later ... I didn't have a phone number I just had an email address and I tried to stay in touch."

And the 65-year-old singer admits he was very nervous about launching a solo career to begin with but soon got "more comfortable" with it.

Speaking about his first concert as the main singer on ITV's The Jonathan Ross Show, he said: "It was a bit terrifying. We were playing in London, Ontario, Canada and it was a given that I could sing the songs, I'd done the album and I'd sung backup with Peter [Gabriel] on older songs but I was more terrified about what to talk about between songs because Peter had this thing, he would tell these funny stories, surreal stories and that really wasn't me ... I eventually kind of finessed it a bit. I got more comfortable with it."

'The Jonathan Ross Show' airs on Saturday September 22 at 9.50pm on ITV.