Findlay Brown may have punched his way through adolescence, but it was a bruising encounter with a woman that led to his startling debut, he tells Tony-Clayton Lea

He's a bit of a lad is our Findlay, with a background story that can only add to his present status as a bit of rough with a backbone of ribbed romantic inclinations.

Born in the north of England over 20 years ago, an inhabitant of a small Yorkshire village, Findlay Brown lived the life of a boy brought up in rural splendour (or isolation, depending on your point of view). There was talk of him joining the army, a conversation possibly stemming from his assertive, some might say aggressive nature. Then there was the subject of his experiences as a bare-knuckle fighter - a mate's father was a blacksmith, who used to work with the local gypsies. The blacksmith used to fight with the gypsies too, and so putting his son and some of his mates into the ring seemed natural enough, viewed not as some kind of social aberration but as a rite of passage.

But then something happened to Findlay Brown - he took some drugs, copped a listen to Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladylandand exchanged fist-fights for music. What to play music on, though? Enter, fortuitously, a family connection in the shape of his grandfather, who was a chef in the days when London swung like a pendulum. Out of his grandad's archive came a set of autographs from the Beatles, which Brown (may God forgive him) sold to purchase guitars.

Fast forward several years. Having exhausted the possibilities of working in as many chocolate factories as he could, we see Brown settled in London, singing his songs by night, working in clothes shops by day ("it was slightly more glamorous than working in chocolate factories - they also had rather fitter looking women") and carrying on a tempestuous relationship with his Danish girlfriend. Fast forward a year or so. We have Separated by the Sea, a crushingly romantic if tensile debut album that proves behind every tough guy lies a sap with a heart of mush.

"The record came about through me and my girlfriend having a bit of a rough time," explains Brown, laid low with the flu, and whiling away the time talking shop. "She moved back to Copenhagen to get some space from me, so I started writing poetry about the relationship. I just wanted to express myself in the best way I felt to show my girlfriend how much I cared about her. I wanted to patch things up, and the poetry turned into songs, which I demoed at home." Brown would then send the songs - one at a time every two to three days - to Denmark in CD cases packed with dried flowers. "The response I was getting from her and her flatmates was very positive; she was really moved by them, and her friends thought they were great. Before I knew it I had an album worth of songs."

It was the first time that Brown had written songs for purely personal reasons, songs that were written solely to win back the affection of his girlfriend. "I think," says Brown hesitantly, "that's maybe why the songs have got a certain appeal." Indeed they have. Already talked up as being the kind of record that gives your average smug singer-songwriter a sharp slap, Separated by the Seais part alt.folk, part 1960s bedsit, part lovelorn yumminess.

FORMER BARE-KNUCKLE fighter Brown isn't the first man to be knocked sideways by love (and chilled to the bone by the thought of losing it), and he's not the first to write redemptively about it, but there's something about Separated by the Seathat marks it out as a different slice of humble pie. Is what lies at the heart of Brown's music also at the heart of him? "Yes. A lot of the time, it's just a part of you. It doesn't necessarily encapsulate you. The album is a very big part of what's going on inside me. It doesn't sum me up totally, but it sums up a part of me very well, and it's a very true part of me." And that part is? "My sensitive side, the compassionate part of my personality. I used to get into a lot of trouble fighting, and I've still got a slightly aggressive side which I don't like at all. I'm still a bit of a lad that likes to have a few drinks and act the goat and be stupid. But this album and the songs on it are about being genuine, a serious side to my nature."

If those two aspects of Brown's nature were in a bare-knuckle fist-fight, which one does he think might win? "It's got to be the compassionate Findlay Brown," he decides. "It's more basic, more core, the survival bit; you take all the rubbish away and that's what you're left with. The compassionate bit is a deeper layer, and they're the layers that are always going to win. Not that it's necessarily any more important, it's just the one thing that will change less."

Findlay is nursing himself back to health; the flu is almost gone, but he's tired and wants to stop talking. He has plenty of gigs coming up too (with some in Ireland over the next few months), so he's got to conserve his energy. Yet there's one question that has to be asked before we're sent packing: the Danish girlfriend, Findlay - was she so impressed with the music, presented in CD cases packed with dried flowers, and so impressed with the lyrics that she decided to return into your arms, to forever act as your muse?

"She's still living in Copenhagen, but we're back together," he states. "She's moving back to London at the end of the year, so it's all good."

Separated by the Sea is on Peacefrog/Vital Distribution