Strolling into a North London bar a mere five minutes late and busily recounting how Dido has just walked past his front door (they're neighbours apparantly), David Gray is looking and sounding very chipper on this fine, Islington morning. So he should be. Having spent the best part of a decade banging his head against the proverbial wall, his fourth album, White Ladder, recently topped the UK charts for the second time, some three years after its initial release. Walk into any high street clothes shop or pizzeria, switch on the TV or radio and you'd have trouble avoiding it.

"Should I have done some homework?" he wonders. A natural storyteller with a ready chuckle, there are no signs that success has gone anywhere near his head or his wardrobe. Once the ritual handshake and the offer of a bottle of mineral water had been accepted, Gray starts fretting. "It's questions that people have sent in right? Sort of light-hearted and cheeky? But people don't know anything about me." Oh, but they do, Mr Gray, they do...

What's with the wobbly head? Isn't it bad for your health? - Robert Green, Manchester
I'm told it's a very dangerous thing to move your head from side to side. There's a very thin membrane connecting the two sides of your brain. It's alright to rock with a head banging motion backwards and forwards, but I just can't get anything right, can I? I don't know why it happens. It started off as a mild wobble, then the more I got into music the wobblier it got. A neck brace might help, I guess.

When are you going to stop flogging White Ladder and the rest of your back catalogue and release some new stuff? - Mark Champan, via e-mail
I think White Ladder is winding down finally. We've been doing it about three years, which i know is far too long. We've been in the studio since the beginning or September, assembling all the ideas i've had in the last two or three years. I hope there'll be some new material coming out next year.

You waited years and went through several failed recoding contract, what was it like when you finally became famous? - Matt Gregory, via e-mail
Bloddy hell! I'll never escape this fucking question. I guess the main thing is that I've finally been given the benefit of the doubt. The other thing is that when you go to places, people know who you are. If you go to parties - you find people want to talk to you about you all the time. So what's happened about being successful is everyone talks to you about being successful.

Lost Songs - where did they turn up? Were you looking for something else at the time? - David Hamm, Chesterfield
White Ladder hasn't really taken off and we realised we could really do what ever we wanted. So i thought, let's just go in and record some old songs i'd written. It was basically just me and the acoustic guitar. It was like making a little archive.

Gabrielle once described you as being the sexiest man in hte world with the sexiest voice. Would you? (If so, patch on or off?) - David Scott, Levenshulme
Would I what? Oh, would I? I'm a happily maried man, that's all i can possible say.

Some of the lyrics on We're Not Right and others on your first album seen to deal with alcoholism ("Betty Ford, won't you be my valentine," etc.). Have you ever had any alcohol or drug problems? -
Hugh O'Sullivan, Birmingham
I don't think it ever got to that point, though certain friends and family might disagree. I don't think I've ever taken it to the edge, er, man. If someone's got a problem, it generally means they're reliant on something. I never reached that stage. But if I keep promoting White Ladder, we'll see.

Success was a long time corning for you. Would you trade half of it for twice as much credibility? - John Roussety, London E11
I don't actually know how much credibility I have or don't have. Let me see ... twice as much credibility? No, because this is just the way things have worked out.

I was at V2001 and was transfixed by your psycho drummer during Please Forgive Me. Who is he? - Ruth Walker, Billericay
That's Clune. He's a man with a colourful history and a mesmerising drumming style. One of the forst gigs I did in London was at the old Wag Club about 10 years ago. It was a strange bill. Orbital were headlining and Clune's band, The Mouth, were playing. I got to watch him performing his Keith Moon-isms. I thought, Wow, this guy is brilliant. He made me laugh until i cried.

Are you worried you are turing into a safe, middle class chart option like The Corrs or Simply Red? - James Vaghan, Farnborough
Once you've got success, you apparantly lose all credibility. I haven't done a fucking thing to lose it. All that's ahppened is that the record company has managed to sell an awful lot of records and, inevitably your music is just everywhere. It's in every French Commention and every coffee shop. If i'm deemed to be safe and middle class that's what I've always been. I haven't.

What's a white ladder? I spied the first reference to it on Sell Sell Sell. - Mike Hall, East Grinstead
It's a nothing, literally a ladder that's painted white. There's a Bob Dylan song. Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall:" I saw a white ladder covered with water". It's always captured my imagination, perhaps because I didn't really understand it. On the Sell Sell Sell record it's the reference to the bones on someone's back. But on the song White Ladder, we started off with a beat and a couple of weird sounds and I suddenly realised I had these chords which i'd been carrying around for years which fitted over the top perfectly. The first words i sang were "white ladder" for some strange reason - it just fitted - and then a load of gibberish. I did my best to write proper lyrics, but never really managed it.

Is it true that you were good at art and once sold some of your paintings for a fair amount of money? - Tim Knights Johnson, Salisbury
Yeah, I used to really enjoy painting, I even had exhibitions and I funded my first band that way. I bought a Transit van and some equipment so I must have sold a few thousand pounds' worth of stuff. My speciality was impasto oil painting. I liked taking big canvases outdoors and painting whatever was there.

Didn't you once hold an exhibition of your paintings, get pissed, walk into the local pub and abuse the landlord. - Louise Sanders, Islington
Guilty as charged, It was a hideously embarrassing night back in Wales. I was having a private viewing of my work. Wine is an integral part of every viewing and I was completely shit-faced. By the time I hit the pub, my nemesis was in there - this geezer Henry Lewis [the landlord] - and we hated each other. I ordered a round of drink, gave him a £20 note and he short changed me, I said, Right, you're a cunt. Henry Lewis is a cunt. I just stared chanting it and got banned for life. That's private views for you.

Did you really have to re-mortgage your house before your big breakthrough with White Ladder? Didn't you ever fell like giving it up and getting a proper job? - Katherine Green, Brockley
Thoughts of a proper job have haunted me a few times. I thought a proper job was imminent. I was terrified. It brought on the black depression from white White Ladder was born. Fear of going to work inspired the album. As for re-mortgaging the house, that's just something we wrote in the David Gray Story we sold to Hollywood.

When you were recording White Ladder, did you realise it was going to be a big hit? - Steven Higgins, Rochdale
It would have been preposterous to believe it would be a big hit, even a medium-sized hit. The most my imagination could come up with was that it would get reviewed and maybe a sufficient number of people would buy it so I could make another one. I thought it had potential, but at that time we didn't even have a recording contract. Nobody was the slightest bit interested in this country. Or, indeed, in any country.

How was your experience working with Orbital? Did they just twiddle the knobs and have you do you own thing? - James Soule, Miami
On the remix of Please Forgive Me they just twiddled the knobs. On the track that ended up on their record they sent me a backing track on a DAT and said, Can you come up with anything for this? Unfortunately, I didn't really get to collaborate. They sent me a tape and I sent them a tape, kind of thing. That's how people jam these days. Says a lot about how music is made, doesn't it?

Which one of the Hartnoll brothers is most embararrasing at Christmas [Gray is Phil Hartnoll's brother-in-law]? - Kelly Dodd, Whitehaven
I'd have to say Phil, just to wind him up.

Is it true that tracks on White Ladder were recorded at your flat while people sat around talking and drinking? - Tom Carswell, via e-mail
It is. On babylon, everyone was just sitting about. The cat was there, the windows were open and I just did the vocals. That's my memory of it. Your memory plays tricks on you - there might have been nobody there.

How many singles can you get away with from one album? - Peter Brugger, Radlett
I was uncomfortable with four. I said, You must be joking. I've no idea. These days, it just seems like you just work a record forever. The game changed sometime in the last 15 years - It's global marketing, I guess. I'd happily make an album a year if I didn't have to tour so much.

You played a Starbucks coffee shop in Seattle a few years back. Care to do it again? - Teresa Cook, Seattle
you do all these strange things because you're told to. Sometimes, though, it can be quite a good vibe. I'd obviously prefer to play in the Gap megastore next time.

Have you ever been in trouble with the law? - Richard Lonsdale, Lewisham
I was arrested for breaking and entering, I left my van keys in the local rugby club, so me and my young accomplace managed to open one of the windows and climb in. I could see the keys on a chair and I was just going to grab them when the alarm went off and we left the keys and ran away, leaving footprints all over the place. We were off our heads s owe ran off into the wilderness for what felt like hours. After breakfast, with the police there and everything, I went back to the club and asked about my keys, leaving the same footprints all over the floor. A policeman spotted them and I said, Alright, it was me. It's a fair cop. They kept us for a day and a night and released us after the las the last bus had gone. I have to walk 15 miles home.

As a painter were you ever prone to Fast Show-style tantrums (a la "The black! The black!")? - Nick Moore, Liverpool
I've had a few meltdowns when I was a bit stressed out. I was very good at tanrums when i was younger. I could go a scarlet colour and jump up and down when the world wasn't quite how i wanted it to be.

Aparantly you smashed up your dressing room when you supported Radiohead on tour in 1996, What happened? - Nic Holton, Gravesend
It was in Toronto. We went berserk in their press conference and ran around like dogs on all fours, jumping into all the Radiohead photos. They seemed to think it was really funny. When the party moved back to their dressing room - we'd already ruined ours - we emptied all the ice onto the floors with all the crisps. Apparantly when we left they cleaned up after us becase they felt so embarrassed. They were very nice abut the whole thing.

You had a small, none-too-demanding part in the 1999 movie This Year's Love. Any thoughts about doing it again in the future? - Andy Beeston, Preston
None-too-demanding? It took me days to get into character. People just don't understand do they? I'm very, very wary of indulging my dramatic side.

What sort of dancer are you? - Carol Barber, Guildford
I have my moments. I've got a few disco moves. There's a good - whoosh! - lasso one and [blows on fingers] the smoking gun.

Have you heard the internet rumour that says every track on White Ladder is about heroin? - Alan Karr, Bidford-on-Avon
There's some fantastic stuff on the internet. Apparantly, I'm also gay and blind. I'm also a manic depressive. So i'm a gay, blind, manic depressive, heroin addict. And i'm perfectly happy with that.