‘I thought – if I die, I’ve had a good innings’: producer James Ford on life, death and making an album from his hospital bed

The Arctic Monkeys, Pet Shop Boys and Pulp collaborator was at the height of his powers as Britain’s most in-demand music producer when leukaemia struck. ‘I realised life is exceptionally fragile,’ he says There was a moment outside the door of a recording studio in rural France, staring at a half-eaten apple that he believed possessed psychedelic properties, when James Ford knew things had really…