It's not quite three years since Almond and his longterm partner's lives changed forever.

Almond, a pillion passenger, hit a car. His friend's legs were crushed while Almond was thrown into the air. He suffered severe head injuries as well as a host of other 'minor' ones: a punctured lung, a burst eardrum and what not.

Today he speaks very quietly and politely and is clearly sweating. You wonder if the accident also affected his speech and how much of him is literally being held together. But he looks well, better than his 50 years and the damage he has done to himself.

He recently performed his first full show since the accident. It was his 50th birthday. "I thought it was the best way to celebrate my birthday. Once 50 used to be like the end of your life. Then it was the new 40 but for me it's the new 30. It's a new beginning for me. It was an unforgettable show."

Almond concedes he may never be able to complete a full live tour. It's baby steps for now.

"I don't know if I will be able to again, " he says, adding that he gets tired very easily. "I get problems from the head injuries I sustained in the accident. Being onstage blurs and confuses me quite a lot. I find it quite difficult to learn new songs. I also lose my memory onstage. It's a short term memory thing but happens more when I get tired."

Almond laughs when I suggest that this may be a simply a matter of old age. "If I was 21 I would have got over things a lot easier. I do ache a lot and get physical problems and whether that will get better or not I don't know. Luckily I was really fit when the accident happened so that probably helped."

He doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs and goes to the gym and swims every week. He does a lot of physio because his arm goes numb and his knees are still a bit dodgy. He is prepared for the fallout for the rest of his life.

Because he punctured his lung, he had to go back and learn how to sing again. He still gets shortness of breath. He also burst one of his eardrums. "I couldn't listen to music for six months. I couldn't even hear people talking but that's healed now."

Having emerged from a twoweek-coma he later realised he could no longer sing. "I had to go to a singing teacher to get my confidence back and get my stamina back again. It was a good thing really because it made me realise how lazy I was getting with my voice."

As if that wasn't enough, when he was a teenager he had a very bad stammer. The accident brought it back. "I have days when I'm tired and I stammer very badly. I can't do phone conversations, particularly if I don't know the person. I end up putting people off because I can't get the words out. But you just deal with these things and have a laugh about it really."

A life long motorcycle enthusiast, he doesn't ride bikes anymore. "I don't ever want to go on a motorcycle for as long as I live, " he says. "It would be like kicking fate in the face. To be honest when people come up behind me it actually scares me. The sound of a bike puts me on edge now. It was very awful."

Almond has had his battles before, none more so than kicking a massive drug habit in the mid '90s. I wonder if, having been on morphine and all manner of painkillers for months after the accident, it was yet another obstacle.

"It wasn't that hard to stop, " he says. "I became so resolute. Even though all the great rock 'n' roll stories are always about cocaine and ecstasy and everything else my worst problems came from prescription drugs . . . sleeping pills, valium, benzodiazepams. I found myself getting double prescriptions from doctors and hoarding them. I was addicted to a sleeping tablet called Halcyon and then they banned them overnight because they were turning people into paranoid schizophrenics and I went into a panic. I was in Thailand and bought boxes and boxes of them and said I would go to Thailand next year. Those were the things that gave me the hellish problems to come off. The withdrawals were very bad."

He went to rehab . . . before it was cool to do so. "Actually it wasn't a celebrity friendly place . . .

let's call it what it is, a psychiatric unit . . . where everybody could see you going through your withdrawals. It was horrific. I thought this would never go away but I got over it. Ever since I was a kid I found that when I put my mind to it I can really do things."

He's needed to draw on that strength of will a lot lately. The hardest thing has been the posttraumatic stress which hit him really badly a few months after the accident. "It was two years of on and off nervous breakdowns.

You feel like you are swimming up a stream of treacle all the time." When he talks about this his stammer begins to worsen.

"The legal side of things was really difficult, it takes years to sort out and it's very debilitating and draining. Everything was a struggle and then I had to get my singing life back on track."

The there is the loss of normal emotion. "My head was not where I wanted it to be." It's quite a common thing after head injuries, he tells me. "You lose the ability to love. All your emotions are in the wrong place. You are given happy news and you don't feel anything and then suddenly you will cry for a song on the radio. It's been an interesting journey. I know that whatever the world can throw at me I can deal with it."

One thing he has gained is a renewed relationship with his family. "They came straightaway.

It made me reconnect with a lot of things."

One guardian angel that showed up was Antony Hegarty.

A longtime admirer of Soft Cell and Almond's solo work, Antony had worked on a project with Almond before the crash even if nothing tangible came from it.

Then after the crash he was a big support. When he felt Almond was ready, he invited him to join him onstage. "I was thrilled but also under a black cloud and spent weeks trying to get out of it, " laughs Almond. "Plus my hearing was still gone and I tended to fall over every now and again so I didn't feel confident about going on stage."

He realised that now was never the right time so he agreed. "It was so overwhelming it was hard to take in. It was the first step and really inspired me to carry on and overcome these obstacles."

Antony stuck around as Almond began to record a new album, taking production duties and contributing vocals to one of the songs. The resulting album, Stardom Road, is an autobiography set to song. Or as Almond describes it, "a musical based on my life starring a version of me".

Turning to cover versions was a natural choice considering he was largely unable to write his own stuff and that he had always enjoyed most success reinterpreting classics, like 'Tainted Love' and 'Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart' . . . both No 1s.

The album, more a cycle of songs that hang together as a story of Almond's life, are an eclectic bunch and include a duet with Sarah Cracknell from Saint Etienne. There is also an intriguing version of 'Strangers in the Night'. "I wanted to give it a darker angle . . . about anonymous sex or cruising if you will. I always preferred Matt Monro's version to Sinatra's."

He really wants to play them live. We want him to come and play them in Ireland. He thinks for a minute. "I love that old theatre in Dublin. What is it called?

The Olympia? Yes I would love to come and play there."

It hasn't been confirmed but you wouldn't put it past him.

Stars who dimmed

Ozzy Osbourne Fell off a quad bike, broke his neck, some ribs and collar bone. Didn't feel a thing

Jerry Garcia Fell into a trippy diabetic coma for five days in 1986, came through before dying for real in 1992

Sharon Stone a car accident in 1990 left her paralysed for a few days then in 2001 a brain haemorrhage left her with a 'white light moment' for a few days. Then she made Basic Instinct 2 . . . go figure

Rick Allen The Def Leppard drummer wrote off his Corvette in California and only lost his left arm . . . then recorded his band's most successful album, Hysteria

Rick Mayall Another pesky quad bike accident, in 1998 Mayall was in a coma for seven days. Back doing voiceover work

Bob Dylan Notoriously reticent after crashing his Triumph, Dylan is widely believed to have broken his neck. He reappeared to record 'All Along The Watch tower '