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Guy Berryman

Coldplay’s brand of user-friendly music may not have made them cool but it has made them rich, with nearly 30m albums sold worldwide since their debut, Parachutes, was released in 2000. “They play mainstream pop-rock that gets on the radio and is lovely without being fluffy,” one record executive was quoted as saying. The four musicians met in 1996 at University College London. Drummer Will Champion says: “We learnt very early on that each part of the band is as important as the others. If you take one part away, the rest kind of collapses.” Vocalist Chris Martin inevitably attracts much of the attention, not just because he is frontman but because of his marriage to Hollywood actor Gwyneth Paltrow, with whom he has two children. Their relationship flew in the face of the serious image that was originally cultivated by him, Champion and guitarists Jonny Buckland and Guy Berryman, 29. “All of us said we’d never date famous people because once you’re in that circle of people turning up at film premieres with the latest celebrity girlfriend on your arm, that’s all anyone is ever going to speak or write about,” says Berryman. It can’t, however, have hurt Coldplay’s popularity across the Atlantic, where they have progressed from playing small clubs in 2000 to amphitheatres with 17,000 seats. The North American finale of their most recent tour played to nearly 500,000 fans and took about £15m at the box office. The European dates were also at large-scale venues and festivals. Fans are now awaiting a fourth album, due late this year. The scale of the group’s success in 2005 and 2006 has led us to upgrade our valuation to £30m each.