DRESSED in tight leather trousers and a faintly ridiculous big furry
hat, he bore virtually no resemblance to the Eighties icon once dubbed
the most beautiful man in pop.

  His overweight and balding appearance was, however, the least shocking
aspect of Adam Ant's stage 'comeback' just before Christmas.

  He could barely remember the words to his hit songs, such as Ant Music
and Prince Charming, perhaps, ironically, with the exception of one of
his most famous lines: 'Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.' Appearing
drunk and disoriented in front of a celebrity audience, including Top Of
The Pops presenter Jamie Theakston, he proceeded to slur a Marc Bolan number
totally out of tune, repeating the same verse four times.

  When told to get off the stage, he insisted on continuing, lying down
in protest.

  Eventually Lenny Beige - host of the cabaret night at Covent Garden's
Talk Of The Town - had to drag him off and apologise to the audience.

  Having been paid pounds 200 to be the 'mystery guest', his appearance
was supposed to be the first of a series of warm-up gigs for an Eighties
pop revival tour, scheduled to begin in April.

  Instead, it was a complete disaster. One guest described it as 'so sad,
it was pitiful. He was clearly on the edge of a breakdown'.

  Now, as everyone knows, it is highly unlikely that he will join fellow
Eighties superstars Belinda Carlisle, Toyah Wilcox, Howard Jones, ABC and
former Spandau Ballet lead singer Tony Hadley playing eight arenas across
Britain - although his publicist insisted last night that he would soon
recover and be part of the show.

  The 47-year-old singer has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act
and is in the Alice Ward of the Royal Free Hospital, North London, after
allegedly waving a fake gun at customers during an incident at the members-
only Prince of Wales bar in Kentish Town.

  The singer - real name Stuart Goddard - has been charged with criminal
damage, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and possession of a firearm
or imitation firearm with intent to cause fear of violence. He is due to
appear before magistrates.

  This unseemly episode has come as no surprise to his friends who have
watched the star - best-known for his trademark highwayman outfit - lose
his marriage, start drinking heavily, succumb to manic depression and wrestle
with the public embarrassment of his father being convicted of gross indecency
on a minor.

  BUT YESTERDAY, Ant gave a rambling telephone interview to a red top
insisting that he isn't mad.

  'They've put me in the Alice in Wonderland ward because they think I'm
crazy. I've been abducted by the police again. I don't know why. The whole
thing's a conspiracy and they're just out to get me.'

  His friends have made it clear, however, that there is no conspiracy.
Marco Pirroni, who played guitar in his backing group, The Ants, said:
'Recently, Adam admitted his lifelong battle with manic depression. As
Adam acted as a potential danger to others this past weekend, for his own
safety and wellbeing, his close friends and family recommended that he
be admitted to a hospital for his own care.

  'Adam was not attacked by police, nor is there a conspiracy "out to
get him". Adam is not suicidal. However, family and friends are concerned
that he is not receiving the care that he requires and they do not want
to see him become a potential threat to himself.'

  For the thousands of girl fans who swooned over the chisel- featured
'dandy highwayman', and for those boys who envied his ability to wear lip
gloss without compromising his masculine appeal, it is hard to comprehend
the scale of Adam Ant's tragic decline.

  One of those who organised his pre-Christmas performance said: 'It was
quite clear the guy was on the edge.

  'Talking to him backstage, one minute he was fine and was making sense,
the next he was off on a tangent, talking total gobbledegook. He was drinking
a fair bit and seemed uncomfortable and on the verge of a breakdown.

  'It was really sad. He was really overweight and also had this ridiculous
furry hat...I think it was to cover his baldness.' 'He was really odd,'
said Paul Jones, a banker in the audience. 'I talked to him but he seemed
unable to hold a conversation.

  'He got really irritated when I mentioned Adam and the Ants and quickly
changed the subject. He seemed much more interested in taking one of my
female friends, a doctor, back to his place.' Perhaps the key to Adam Ant's
latest breakdown - for it is not his first - is best revealed by an incident
a week earlier when he attended the premiere party for Will Smith's new
film about Muhammad Ali.

  This time, dressed equally bizarrely in outsized stetson hat, tartan
trousers and sunglasses, he looked very solitary and everyone stared at
him.

  'They were turning round and going: "It's Adam Ant, look there's Adam
Ant  I used to really fancy him,"' says one woman.

  Indeed, he recently admitted that when people commented: 'You used to
be Adam Ant!' he replies: 'I've still got a pulse you know.'

  But his rapid fall seems to have been the result of his troubled personal
life. Friends say the twice-married star was having problems with a new
girlfriend; was depressed because his record label had just dropped him
after 21 years and he had money problems.

  Moreover, he still hasn't recovered from the collapse of his second
marriage. This happened shortly after the birth of the couple's daughter,
Lily, in March 1998.

  Significantly, he also started drinking again on his 47th birthday after
23 teetotal years. He had stopped after feeling the effects of a two-bottle
vodka binge with Kenny Morris, a member of the punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees. All these factors combined to tip him over the edge.

  It must be hard for someone like Adam Ant to think that the current
generation of young pop fans, who worship Steps and Britney Spears, might
never have heard of his name.

  But during the Eighties, he had 15 hits in three years including Ant
Music, Stand And Deliver, Goody Two Shoes and Dog Eat Dog.

  His fans, nicknamed Antpeople, besieged his homes in London and Hertfordshire.

  Born in South London, Stuart Goddard was halfway through an art course
in the late Seventies when he dreamed up a fantasy character called Adam
Ant.

  His first Ant incarnation saw him performing bondage routines with his
face covered with a leather mask. But these were soon replaced with the
trademark highwaymen outfits, ruffles and frills.

  Actress Amanda Donohoe, who can boast that he was her first boyfriend,
still speaks warmly of meeting him when she was 15 and describes him as
her 'mentor'.

  'He was an incredible influence,' she has said. 'He'd been to art school
and was into graphics and did an awful lot of reading and encouraged me
to read and look at art.'

  They split up when Adam became famous and she went on to pursue an acting
career, but there was no shortage of other women.

  At the height of his fame 'sex was available every two feet' and when
asked how many women he'd slept with, Adam would reply 'under 1,000'.

  But by 1985 the bubble had burst. After a disappointing appearance at
Live Aid, and the novel experience of seeing his latest single struggle
to reach No 50 in the charts, he fled to Los Angeles and reinvented himself
as an actor.

  He had moderate success in films and TV shows such as The Equalizer
and Northern Exposure, but never managed to attain the celebrity status
he had achieved as a pop star.

  But there was much worse to come. In 1987 his father was found guilty
of gross indecency on a minor. Even though he had split from Adam's mother
when he was just seven and had never spoken to him since, Adam did not
escape the public humiliation.

  He suffered his first breakdown in 1994 when he was living in California
and checked himself into Cedars Sinai Medical Centre for six weeks, where
he was prescribed Prozac.

  Returning to London, he married his second wife, but last year he was
again hospitalised after suffering another breakdown.

  AT THE time he said: 'I started drinking again. It was my 47th birthday
and I hadn't touched a drop since Christmas 1978. So I thought: "Why the
**** aren't you drinking? Give yourself a break." So now I like vodka and
champagne.' As for his love life, a close friend revealed: 'He has been
seeing a French girl called Heidi but then at Christmas she returned home
to see her family.

  'Although there was a lot of sexual attraction, they had been having
a few rows and she found his erratic behaviour harder to deal with.

  'He is basically a really nice, sweet guy who means well, but he has
these pretty severe psychiatric problems.

  Although he is due in court tomorrow, the hearing is expected to be
delayed until doctors decide he is fit to plead.

  Adam Ant's mind may now be so befuddled he can't remember the words
of his greatest hits, but perhaps it would do him some good to recall those
in his Eighties anthem Stand And Deliver, which ran: 'Even though you fool
your soul, your conscience will be mine, all mine.'