It has been portrayed as a grown-up separation between two adults who remain close friends.

But Coldplay star Chris Martin has now conceded his split from Gwyneth Paltrow had caused him a “year of depression”.

“I still wake up down a lot of days. But now I feel like I've been given the tools to turn it around,” he said.

In his first proper interview, Martin, 39, spoke frankly about his “very wonderful separation-divorce” -bizarrely dubbed “conscious uncoupling” at the time by Hollywood star Paltrow’s lifestyle website, Goop.

The singer told the Sunday Times the divorce is a “weird one”, and he still goes on holiday with his ex-wife, who is the mother of his two children Apple, 11 and Moses, 9.