Sadly, it seems it was all to cover up his undiagnosed bipolar disorder, which is itself quite a depressing thought. Having looked up to Adam and been inspired by him, it is a bit distressing to think that his, almost literally, cocksure behaviour which made him a role model to many was just a cover for his mental illness. I feel sorry for Adam, but in some ways, even sorrier for his legacy as a hip-swinging advert for lust, self-belief, musical adventurism, ambition and "showbiz".

I know the story like the back of my hand from the biographies I devoured as a kid, and even the comic-book serialisation in the long-forgotten TOPS magazine. Stuart Leslie Goddard, born a Scorpio on 3 November 1954, went to Marylebone Grammar school (first point of connection with my own schooling), then went on to art college where he studied graphic design. He joined a traditional rock n' roll band called Bazooka Joe, who were once supported at a gig by the Sex Pistols, legend having it that this is what blew Adam away and led him to be a punk. After that, my recollection of the story becomes a little blurred, not least by the new information presented in his autobiography.

You see, in all the children's magazines I read, Stuart Goddard woke up one day and decided he was going to be Adam Ant - and that was it. No reason, just one of those things people do when they want to be famous pop stars. Now, I learn that I was being protected. Goddard took sleeping tablets in a suicide attempt and woke up in hospital. There he had his epiphany - he needed a new identity to destroy his old one. "Stuart was a rather frightened, insecure graphic design student without any real direction," Adam said recently. "After my suicide attempt, I felt there was nothing left to lose. It was definitely time to become Adam Ant," and he has never looked back.

Changing one's name and assuming a new persona is a long and noble tradition in showbusiness, where the act was more important than the actor, and it was a vital ingredient of punk. The Damned's drummer Christopher Miller became known as Rat Scabies; Marianne Elliot became Poly Styrene, lead singer of X-Ray Spex; Susan Ballion became Siouxie Sioux, and so on. Adam, however, managed to put a lot more thought into his stage name than a clever pun or a revolting description. To him it wasn't an act - it was to be his whole personality.

He liked the idea of being Adam, the Biblical first man, and the 'Ant' bit came when he decided that his band should be Ants, an insect inspiration to rival the Beatles, which, in his own words, "were hard working, tough and communal". Carol Goddard, his wife, soon came to call herself Eve in order to remind him that they were married.

Adam was never going to be a conventional punk (which sounds oxymoronic, but by the second wave of punk bands in 1978-9 there were plenty of pale imitations of the original pioneers), but it is even clearer that while he was "in" the "movement", he was not really "of" it. Young Parisians, the first Adam and the Ants single, does not sound like a punk record. Instead, it sounds, as Adam has described it, more like "a 1920's Parisian jazz record".

Given that, at the same session, he recorded a version of Catch a Falling Star, and in the 1978 song Friends he namechecks Shirley Bassey and Arthur Askey, there seems very little other than his appearance in Derek Jarman's "punk" film Jubilee to link him that strongly with the nihilism of the time. Sure, he was managed by Malcolm McClaren for a bit, he was mates with Sid Vicious and he wore bondage gear with rather too much enthusiasm, but was he ever really a punk?

Adam's ambition and his desire to be conventionally successful made him much less of a punk than his contemporaries. Punk introduced a long-running street battle between light entertainment aimed at "the masses", whose figureheads were Bruce Forsyth, Jimmy Tarbuck and Tom O'Connor, and the nascent alternative comedy circuit. Hard to believe that French and Saunders, Ben Elton and Paul Merton were once considered outside of the mainstream, but their kicking against the old order was a hallmark of the time. Adam, however, was firmly in the "old showbusiness" camp - happy to declare his affection for Tommy Steele, Liza Minnelli and Frank Ifield. Punk was notorious for its Year Zero approach, even if Johnny Rotten couldn't help listening to Abba in secret. Adam was not ashamed, indeed made it a badge of honour, to celebrate the heroes and heroines of mass entertainment.

Connected to this was the fact that Adam would not settle for small-time, cult status (he describes being a "cult" as a polite word for "loser") and was constantly looking for ways to make his "Antmusic" into a mainstream force. Indeed, he was very clear that "Antmusic", while it was formed in the punk years, had to be a unique, and much broader, genre. He was determined to turn any setback into an advantage for him, a sure sign of someone who is driven to succeed. Though Malcolm McClaren tore Adam and the Ants apart when he effectively sacked Adam from his own band (in order to take the remnants and form Bow Wow Wow), Adam was knocked back, if not down, and remained determined to stay on a course to success.

McClaren often gets a bad press in regard to Adam and the Ants - not quite the "man who said no to the Beatles", but certainly someone who almost destroyed Antmusic before it started. However, as Adam readily acknowledges, his input into the sound that became Antmusic cannot be overestimated. McClaren, in trying to help Adam discover his sound, gave him a mix tape he had made to help inspire him. It included Gary Glitter's Hello! I'm Back Again, Got To Pick a Pocket from the Oliver! soundtrack, and most importantly of all, Burundi Black by Burundi Black.

Ant then got in touch with Marco Pirroni, once of Siouxie and the Banshees, on the strength of him being the best guitarist he'd ever seen and on the offchance that he might fancy writing some songs. To Adam's surprise and delight, the picky and somewhat aloof Pirroni apparently said "yes" straight away. McClaren had previously told Adam that his first album, Dirk Wears White Sox, had "too many ideas" and he needed to simplify. Adam's view of the songwriting relationship with Pirroni is that he would always be seeking to get to the heart of what Adam wanted to say in a song by asking him "how do you want it to sound?" However the partnership worked, it really worked, and once they'd agreed on the fundamentals - two drummers a la the Glitter Band for power, a guitar sound based on spaghetti western riffs, and lots of whooping - they finally found the vibe they were looking for and Antmusic became a reality.

Listening back to the first collaboration between the new Ants, the album Kings of the Wild Frontier, it is a surprise to this day how utterly unique it sounds. Even its weaker brother, Prince Charming, is an utter marvel of invention, full of tribal drumming and multi-layered chanting that makes it sound like a Native American gathering orchestrated by Ennio Morricone. Most importantly of all, though, Adam married this sound to a visualisation that made the look of the music as important as its sound.

Looking back at the publicity photos, it is almost unbelievable that the rest of the band went along with something that, in this grey age, would be felt as making them look "a bit poofy". It is only something that punk, with its style-is-content attitude, made easy. In the visually conservative era we live in now, where style is by and large rejected over "The Music" - an attitude typified by Oasis's low-brow rejection of "dressing up" - one can only marvel that there was ever a meeting when grown men were told they were going to be dressed like Jack Sparrow and agreed wholeheartedly - even before they knew that Antmusic was going to take off in the way that it did.

However, as the pressure of stardom took its toll, Adam's muse began to leave him. The signs were there on Friend or Foe (whose cover, remember, is a screen grab from his performance on the light entertainment Cannon and Ball Show), which delved deep into his personal troubles. The lyrics of Made of Money ("you think I am made of money. my accountant thinks that's funny") are particularly striking in this regard - how often does the word accountant get used in a pop song? Goody Two Shoes, both lyrically and visually, tried to deal with the press's obsession with his teetotalism, and Here Comes the Grump ("when you get a number one the only way is down") his wrestling with the pressures of fame.

Of course, all this had been invited and courted by Adam, who made good use of the growing tabloid interest in the gossip surrounding the world of pop. Getting on kids' TV shows was a part of an exposure strategy that now forms the backbone of most pop music PR activity, but was a relatively new concept for a "grown-up" band at the time, let alone a punk one. The phrase "biting the hand" comes to mind, but it is ever thus with those who want the upside of free publicity without the intrusion into their personal lives.

On Friend or Foe, Adam shed the make-up and the eighteenth-century togs in true Mike Yarwood "...and this is me" style. When he put the puffy clothes back on for Strip, recasting himself again as an eighteenth-century libertine, and the astronaut suit for Apollo Nine (on the "back to basics" album Vive Le Rock) it was obvious that his sun had set. Adam scowls at the fact that he was not invited to sing on the Band Aid record in late 1984, which featured the new royalty of British pop music - George Michael, Boy George, Simon Le Bon - but was happy with a bottom-of-the-bill slot at Live Aid, all of which indicated how far the rot had gone.

Yet Adam could not, and still cannot, let go of the fact that he was once a star and it does seem that his manic depression has been exacerbated by this mismatch between what once was and what now is. His autobiography records his chart placings and his obsession with being number one so vividly that it is clear that this decline still smarts. When he mentions that a Duran Duran comeback concert in 1993 had meagre ticket sales until they announced that Adam was on the bill, whether this is self-deceiving or not, it shows how much he yearns to believe that he has the Midas touch.

Refusing to go away and wanting to continue being a successful musician is a double-edged sword. The experience of the Rolling Stones, a band that appears to be irrelevant to anyone other than a tight-knit, but massive, core of dedicated fans, is instructive. Adam, as he knows, is still supported by legions of thirty- and forty-something men for whom his rags to riches story, his pluck and his bravery, and, above all, his unique (and arguably unparalleled) sound inspired them to start bands and not be scared of "ridicule".

To hear Adam talk now, it is sad to hear of his trials as a B-movie star and his breakdowns, but heartening to see him coming back and talking passionately about music again. It will never be the same as it was 25 years ago, but if he can get even sour old Paul Morley, whose archer-than-thou attitude was overwhelmed by the majesty of the Prince Charming tour in 1982, to write the sleeve notes to his latest Best Of, then maybe it really is time for Adam to put the show back into showbusiness, with the Ants leading the invasion.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees