Last month Coldplay revealed David Bowie had shot down the idea of a collaboration when he heard the track they had in mind, replying, “It’s not a very good song, is it?”

Now poor Chris Martin admitted Beyonce gave them the same treatment when they approached her with with a song called Hook Up, calling it “awful”. Ouch.

Beyonce, Chris Martin and Bruno Mars
Beyonce, Chris Martin and Bruno Mars lit up the Super Bowl stage (Julio Cortez/AP/PA)

He told Rolling Stones magazine she turned it down “in the sweetest possible way: She told me, ‘I really like you – but this is awful’.”

But they proved, with the right songs, their collaboration can be explosive – as Coldplay, Queen B and Bruno Mars proved on stage at the Super Bowl 50 half-time show on Sunday.

Watching from the wings were Beyonce’s husband Jay Z and Chris’s ex Gwyneth Paltrow, who he confessed he had a “weird” divorce with.

Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow
Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow ‘consciously uncoupled’ in 2014 (Colin Young-Wolff /Invision/AP)

Chris, 38,  and Gwyneth, 43, “consciously uncoupled” in March 2014  after 12 years of marriage and he told Rolling Stone: “I have a very wonderful separation-divorce. It’s a divorce – but it’s a weird one.”

He continued: “I don’t think about that word (divorce) very often. I don’t see it that way. I see it as more like you meet someone, you have some time together and things just move through.”

They also share two children, Apple and Moses, who Chris revealed had helped him get up-to-date with chart music by showing him Silento’s Watch Me (Whip Nae Nae), a favourite of Cheryl Fernandez-Versini.

Chris Martin and Coldplay
Coldplay led the half time show, but Chris didn’t understand why they used to be a punchline (Matt Slocum/AP/PA)

“I’m not sure if I can whip, but I can nae nae with the best of them,” he joked.

It went down better than his songs have done with some fans, as he spoke about the fact that Coldplay are often the butt of jokes.

“I had a couple of years in the mid-2000s where it was really confusing to me. I was like, ‘Why is our band sometimes a punch line?’” he said.