Goldie: Life has been like a reality TV show

He admits in his new book he 'puts people on edge' when he speaks to them.

But appearances are deceiving. And in the autobiography, All Things Remembered, he explains how he has found happiness after many eventful years.

The Wolverhampton drum 'n' bass legend and one-time hellraiser now lives a tranquil, happily-married existence in Thailand where he practises yoga and Buddhism, and plays backgammon.

Gone are the days when he would floor someone for the merest slight - he broke his left hand nine times, mostly in fights - or down a bottle of Vodka and snort a couple of lines of cocaine on a night out.

The turnaround came, as often happens, at one of the lowest ebbs in his life. His drug addiction was at its height and he was going through an expensive divorce, when he broke his leg water-skiing whilst rehearsing for the TV series The Games in 2006.

In retrospect, he calls it 'a beautiful accident' because out of it came 'the best thing that ever happened to me'.

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In the long-run, the compensation he received from Channel 4 paid for his divorce but in the short term it meant he had to reschedule a gig in Shanghai, which led to him meeting his wife Mika, 'the muse of my universe'.

They had an old-fashioned courtship, with Goldie wooing her with hundreds of letters, and have now been married for 10 years and have a daughter Koko. He still writes her love letters, he says.

In the book, he reflects on his upbringing in care homes in Hammerwich - 'scary, very Dickensian' - and Croxdene, Wolverhampton, and the sexual abuse he suffered from a teenage girl when he was nine, and of racist bullying.

One foster mother allowed her son to put a dog lead around his neck and 'walk' him around the front room.

But it was not all bad. He recalls roller-skating around the Mander Centre, where the floor was 'as smooth as eggs', being chased by security. "In the end they had to put the shutters up to stop us going in," he writes. He was later called up for the England B roller-skating squad.

Goldie rose to fame through his talent for art. He famously covered his Heath Town estate in graffiti. Fans from Birmingham, Coventry and Leamington Spa made pilgrimages to see his work - an early taste of celebrity.

"It was nice to have given people a good reason to go to the place I lived in because there hadn't been many tourists before," he says.

On the back of it he went to America to work with his graffiti heroes, which led to a job making gold teeth in the flea market in Miami and the evolution of his own trademark look.

Along the way he became a drum 'n' bass artist whose work is rated by some of music's biggest names. Madonna phoned and asked him to produce an album but he turned her down because it would have meant going to Los Angeles and, with his cocaine addiction at its peak, he didn't think he would get out alive.

But he jumped at the chance to work with David Bowie, initially on a music project, and later on a British gangster film, Everybody Loves Sunshine, where he recalls sitting in a caravan on the Isle of Man while, across from him, Bowie, the coolest man in the universe, was knitting.

"He said it chilled him out," writes Goldie, describing the experience as 'surreal'.

The father-of-five, who was once engaged to Bjork, owns up to using cocaine off and on, but mostly on, for 35 years. The drug turned him into a womaniser, a thug and someone who drove cars at 175mph. He still falls off the wagon but these days has switched the focus of his addictive nature to Bikram yoga, which helped him mourn the death of his mother in 2014.

At one point, it became a six-days-a-week obsession - 'because I'm a little bit insatiable.' He also sold his Bentley, Porsche and Mercedes and now co-runs a yoga training company, Yogangsters. He would love to see yoga taught in schools and prisons, he says.

Another of Goldie's addictions seems to TV reality shows. He has appeared in Celebrity Big Brother and Strictly Come Dancing, being the first to be booted out both times. In contrast, he was runner-up to comedian Sue Perkins in Maestro in which celebrities learned how to conduct an orchestra. He has also been in Come Dine With Me and All Star Mr and Mrs.

But the colourful and unconventional DJ, musician, artist and actor, is unapologetic. He enjoys ruffling feathers on the shows, the money comes in handy, and besides, he adds: "My life has been a TV reality show."