And he can cook...

His annus horribilis began when he was arrested at 3am one night for speeding - he was off to Chinatown for a quick dinner while his terrines were in the oven. He tried to leg it and was put in jail. His irresponsible streak was a major cause of the financial catastrophe that was to follow.

Soon after his arrest, he came back from New York by Concorde - where he had been promoting a cookbook he had written called Your Place or Mine? - to find his phone teaming with messages from his bank manager. Unless he paid up £500,000 for the rent on his restaurants in five days, he would go bankrupt. To compound the situation he owed thousands in unpaid bills as his accountants needed his signature on the cheques.

He hit rock bottom when bailiffs pulled up in trucks outside his beloved Maison Novelli. He ran to lock the door so his customers could finish their lunch before the bailiffs took the tables. 'It was like being shot against a wall. But the weird thing is you don't feel anything. It wasn't physical, it was mental.'

The collapse of his empire was not a total surprise to onlookers. He slept four hours a night (with the help of sleeping pills), worked seven days a week and smoked 40 cigarettes a day. He rarely ate (ironically enough) and drank too much. Meanwhile the person in charge of his empire was a sous chef he once worked with.

Today, some of this form has improved - he has given up smoking and is contemplating a triathlon in August. But he lost his driving licence (again) in February for speeding, and when I meet him is obviously shattered: he gives a small groan of horror when he sees himself in the mirror. It turns out he's been up for the past two nights.

The first was at the Carlton Restaurant Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel. The second I never get to the bottom of. Was he with a woman? 'I need to check that with my solicitor!' I'm sure he was, though I don't think it was the singer Lulu - despite reports, they are not involved - or Alex Best, though they seem to be in text contact. Sometimes, he admits, men look at him 'with big eyes' when he talks to their wives.

The twice-divorced Novelli has always had an intense relationship with women, a pattern that began with his mother. The eldest of four, he was brought up in Arras, northern France, by a mother crippled with polio.

'She's 73 and she's never driven a car, or ridden a bicycle, or shopped for herself. But she's strong. And my dad is a darling. He's very compulsif, very much in control.' It was hard to pin him down to exactly what, but he says his father did 'every kind of job' and before he retired was the foreman of a shopping complex.

It was his mother who introduced Novelli to the joys of good food. 'We used to walk and walk to find the best. I would say, "Why don't we just go there, Mummy?" She would say, "No, it's not right." Her cooking was very creative.'

The madness with which Novelli approaches life was evident even as a child. His hyperactivity led him to be psychologically tested and he's been an insomniac since birth. Why was he so disturbed? 'I don't know. My brother and sisters were not the same.'

He was put in remedial class at his school, 'which killed me', and thrown out at 14. He ended up working off his manic energy making omelettes at a local brasserie. 'I could make 15 different omelettes at the same time in different pans. I had more urgency than anyone else.'

By 20 he was private chef to Baron Elie de Rothschild at Chateau Lafite, in Royaumont, near Paris, before moving to England to find his fortune. He ended up cooking breakfasts, marrying a cleaner called Tina when he was 22, and living in a caravan in Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire.

He worked 18-hour days at that stage, and, unsurprisingly perhaps, Tina had an affair after eight years. He is still incredibly hurt by this ancient wound.

'Unbelievable,' he breathes. 'That was the pain of my life, when she left me for somebody else. I worked six days a week, 18 hours a day, but I don't think that's to blame, because I was getting there slowly.'

He learnt about the affair from their daughter Christina. 'She was five, six, and one day she said, "There's Uncle _", giving his name. I said, "What do you mean, 'uncle'?" She said, "The one that kisses Mummy like you do." '

This early hurt is perhaps why he finds it hard to settle down, much as part of him would like to emulate his parents, who have been married for 42 years.

However, he admits himself that he is completely black and white; he picks difficult, dramatic women then gets disillusioned when they behave badly, or want domesticity. But the real love of his life is his daughter, now 17. 'Do you think she'd be proud of me if I died?' he asks at one point, looking wanly into the distance.

Certainly his ex-wife wouldn't be. In 1991, Tina began a court case against him for more maintenance, and he discovered they were technically still married because he had not checked that all the necessary paperwork had gone through years previously. He didn't speak to Christina, then 14, for more than a year, and went down with shingles, painful fluid-filled blisters, across his chest.

'The thing that upset me the most was my daughter. She was destroyed. That poor little girl who had not a clue.'

In the midst of all this, and at the height of his restaurant crisis in June 1998, Novelli got engaged to Anzelle Visser, a South African who used to work in one of his restaurants. The marriage lasted five years. What went wrong? 'I don't know. She was terribly destroyed when it ended. It was missing something.'

He is currently in an on-off relationship with a 29-year-old IT expert called Joanna. I think we can assume he is not moping alone. 'You are quite conventional,' he muses of me at one point, 'but you 'ave sometheeng.'

He has something, too. There is no doubt he is sexy, with his bedroom eyes and his straining muscles and incredible concern for your wellbeing. He is a real homme fatal; one of those rare men who try to use their sexual power for their own ends and succeed.

He admits he goes crazy now unless he has sex every day, and yet endearingly reveals later that, after his first marriage broke up, he was celibate for so long he was scared to kiss a woman. 'I didn't even know how to, I promise you,' he confides.

Two failures haven't put him off marriage - he says he'd like to try it again this year because he wants a son.

Business-wise, Novelli hasn't been content to simply enjoy the good life in the country running just one restaurant. He is now in partnership with the German CCA Group, who own Brocket Hall, hence his presence as chef patron at the Auberge du Lac. He says other offers are pouring in and his new London restaurant - at the Capital Club in Abchurch Lane - is taking off. He reaches for his wine. 'Before, I had £1 million in the bank and I was miserable, I was insecure. Now I'm much healthier. I don't drink as much. I respect myself. I have learned not to be so stubborn, impulsive. I used to be very immature, a control freak. What happened to me was, like, welcome to the world.'

I ask if he has met Lord Brocket. He says, yes, often. 'He's a super chap. I feel like a squatter here! He's a child like me.'

He is also friends with another rather ridiculous character, James Hewitt, who he met when he took part in The Games, the Channel 4 show. 'He is great fun.'

One can only hope he won't waste this second opportunity to prove himself, and end up a figure of fun like his new-found friends Hewitt and Brocket.

Novelli checks his watch - it is 7pm and dark outside. 'Are you hungry?' he asks. 'Do you want some din-dins?'

He takes me for a terrific meal at his local pub. He is utterly gentlemanly, delightful company, insists on paying, and urges me to text him to say I have got home safely. The next day, by chance, I see in a gossip column he has been out with a journalist I know. I e-mail her for details.

'He's v nice and a great cook,' she e-mails back. 'What more could you want?'

What more indeed?