Moby and Eminem: one is Mr Nice, the other Mr Nasty. They are going head to head at the Brit awards this month for best international male artist and it could get dirty. Ever since Moby accused Eminem of spreading violent, misogynist lyrics, Moby has been top of the rapper’s hate list.

Nobody listens to techno — Moby’s stock in trade — Eminem has jeered. He has taken the mickey out of Moby in his songs and videos and has drawn a sinister picture of him killing his dorkish rival, which now hangs on the wall of Moby’s New York apartment. And who do I find myself sympathising with? The white-trash rapper from Detroit instead of the amiable, ambient descendant of Herman “Moby Dick” Melville.

It is unfair. It’s not even a musical thing, because Moby is more tuneful. When we meet at his vegan cafe in New York — Moby practises what he preaches about being kind to all living matter — I am charmed by his good manners and unassuming air. Moby, a pint-sized, balding 37, would be at home in a donkey jacket and bobble hat on a CND demonstration with Michael Foot.

“When I was growing up I was an Anglophile culturally and musically,” he says. “I used to speak in a fake British accent and pretend I was a drummer in a Scottish band.” He learnt the lingo from Gregory’s Girl, one of his favourite films, and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

Hanging out as a teenager in an affluent New York suburb, where he was the poor son of a widow surrounded by the offspring of Wall Street millionaires, he’d watch Monty Python and the Young Ones and listen to punk rock.

He counted the British entry stamps on his passport recently and came up with 150. His first hit, Go, took off in Britain, where he was part of the rave scene of the early 1990s. Eventually America caught on and he went on to sell 10m copies of his album Play.

He ought to be thoroughly rude, like most rock stars, but is striving instead for zen-like contentment. If Eminem confronts him at the Brits, Moby — who became a Christian in his twenties — says mildly: “I’ll turn the other cheek. The feud is over. It’s done. It was very one-sided, him against me.”

Not that he passes up the opportunity for a dig, mind. When I suggest that Eminem has been de-fanged for the mass market and hailed as the new Elvis for his white man’s black music, Moby grimaces.

“Some of his lyrics are incredibly violent. He says it’s an act, but a lot of 12-year-old kids listen to him. I worry about the morals of a pop culture that speaks to the disenfranchised,” he says, pointing to the murder of a tramp on Tyneside by a teenage Eminem fan. “I don’t support censorship but I do believe in artistic responsibility. If you write a song which espouses violence, you can’t be too surprised when a die-hard fan responds by committing a violent act.”

He’s not impressed, either, by the acceptance that the homophobic Eminem has won among gays such as Elton John. He’s not gay himself, Moby insists, trying to scotch some bisexual rumours.

He grew up fast, mixing with rich, young druggies, but straightened out later. “I had a long period in my twenties when I didn’t drink, take drugs or was even particularly sexually active,” he says.

But it would be inhuman to sell as many albums as he has and not participate in a few orgies. “I did start to get out of control, drinking and being promiscuous, but I’ve calmed down. People don’t throw themselves at me. I’m just not one of those types,” he admits. “I feel sorry for my security guards at concerts because they have nothing to do.”

There’s pride, not indignation, in his voice. Moby, predictably, is a peacenik. He spends six nights a week on the internet, lecturing his fans on his website about the “war for oil” among more parochial matters.

“The only person who is committed to this war in Iraq is Bush,” he tells me. I ask whether he’s thinking of using the Brit awards as an anti-war platform. “No,” he replies. “It would be preaching to the converted.” But he wants to pipe up at the American Grammys three days later, where he is also up for an award, because it will have a bigger, more nuke ’em audience.

He talks, touchingly, about his plans for a memorial to the victims of September 11 — incidentally, his birthday — which he intends to submit to New York officials. In addition to his music, Moby is a cartoonist and wannabe architect. “At the risk of sounding conceited, I think my idea’s pretty good,” he says. He has designed two long pools of water, reflecting the towers, which will illuminate the name of every person killed.

But Moby is so PC it hurts. Naturally, he thinks of himself as Mr Reasonable. “I used to be an extreme fundamentalist vegan and militant extremist, who thought I was right and everybody else was wrong, but I’ve settled down a bit,” he says.

“I don’t think of myself as left wing or right wing, I’m a pragmatist. I believe in a flexible, balanced approach.” What this boils down to is that he is now willing to be friends with someone who eats burgers.

He blogs away on the internet about the Bush budget deficit, watching the Superbowl despite his dislike of American football and making friends with baby pigeons. I know he’s a nice guy: sensitive, thoughtful, kind to animals and all that, but, oh Eminem, just take a chainsaw to him.