What DO so many A-list women see in pop's Mr Soppy?

At first glance, they appear an odd couple: the beautiful, 24-year-old Hollywood darling Jennifer Lawrence and rangy, 37-year-old British crooner Chris Martin.

Yet they’ve been photographed together strolling off a private jet and spotted backstage together at his concert.

Jennifer Lawrence, star of not one but two hit franchises, The Hunger Games and X-Men, is Hollywood’s most in-demand leading lady.

Already an Oscar winner, as well as a face of Christian Dior, she is refreshingly outspoken and funny. Presumably she has her pick of men. So who does Miss Hollywood choose? None other than Chris Martin, a dad of two from Devon.

He, of course, has form in the starry dating arena, having recently consciously uncoupled from another Oscar winner and Dior face, Gwyneth Paltrow.

To attract one Oscar hottie might be good fortune, but two says the guy has something few others can offer. And if two Oscar blondes weren’t enough, he’s been spotted with Rihanna, too, and TV presenter Alexa Chung, although his people have denied he dated her.

But no one can deny he bats at a very high level. Vogue cover girls only.

So what is it about Chris Martin that women find so irresistible? The answer is that he has carved out a niche so specific that only he occupies it. It makes him catnip to rich, Anglophile celebrity women who fancy themselves as having liberal values but also have middle-class aspirations.

To start with — his looks. As one friend who has met him says: ‘He’s good-looking but not absurdly so; it’s not like M&S underwear model David Gandy where looks become the whole point. He sort of grows on you. And he’s very trim and fit.’

He has always been clean-living, but years with Gwyneth have refined him into a healthy-eating person who works out, and it shows. There were pictures of him doing cartwheels to impress Jennifer.

But while lots of men are handsome and fit, very few are rock stars — and, of course, Chris’s role as Coldplay’s voice, heart and soul is his key calling card. He plays piano, keyboard and guitar and writes most of the words and music.

Even better, if he falls in love with you, he writes songs for you, like a Renaissance poet crafting sonnets to his love. Fix You, the song he wrote for Gwyneth in 2005 after her father died, is one of the most moving expressions of grief in recent years.

A handsome, musical-genius rock star will, of course, be inundated with offers. But unlike most rock stars, Chris is a well-brought-up, upper-middle-class boy of some academic distinction who just happens to be a musician. In spite of his fame and 80 million records sold, he knows how to hold a knife and fork, will open doors and can converse on Plato.

And he is English, a sign of refinement in some American eyes. To a Hollywood girl, he must seem like elegance personified, a lyricist of startling imagination with a trump card: that male rarity, emotional intelligence.

Which brings us to his very English, privileged background. Chris was brought up by Anthony, 73, a retired chartered accountant, magistrate and president of the local cricket club, and Alison, 60, a music teacher, in a beautiful Georgian grade II-listed pile set in eight acres, with a paddock for ponies and a tennis court, in the hamlet of Whitestone near Exeter.

The eldest of five, he was educated at traditional, fee-paying Sherborne School (alma mater of such English gents as Hugh Bonneville, Jeremy Irons and Stanley Johnson, father of Boris). His father is believed to be a multi-millionaire from the sale of the slightly-less-grand-sounding Martins of Exeter, a caravan company founded by Chris’s grandfather in 1929.

From Sherborne, Chris went to University College, London and read Ancient World Studies, graduating with a first-class degree. Coldplay was formed with friends there, but sensible Chris refused to release an album until after their finals.

Hell-raiser he most certainly is not. He’s so well-behaved that some rival male rock stars, and some men in general, find him rather annoying.

Typically ungentlemanly, Oasis’s Noel Gallagher said: ‘Chris Martin looks like a geography teacher.’

A man I know who spent a weekend with him said: ‘He made a pious speech about how he always carried his own bags.’ A speech many women would find endearing, but which makes some men want to hit him.

So: posh, educated, well-mannered and rich, too.

Some female stars are happy to date backing dancers, fitness trainers, and men who’ve stalked them on Twitter, but the likes of Jennifer Lawrence don’t want to worry whether a prospective beau is more smitten by their celebrity status and hard cash than their lovely self.

Plus, he’s far from a publicity-seeker. If it always seemed churlish that he avoided being photographed with Gwyneth, he is not about to post more embarrassingly compromising pictures of Jennifer on the internet or tweet a photo of their main course.

People who’ve met him say he’s ‘insanely funny — you can’t stop laughing’; and Simon Pegg, the comic actor, is one of his children’s godfathers.

Which brings us to possibly the most compelling part of the Chris Martin love-god story: Gwyneth. That he’s been through tough house-training by the perfectionist actress has proven him a fitting husband. He’s also very obviously a hands-on father to Apple, ten, and Moses, eight.

• He’s the sort of chap who can cook a roast, chat to your parents, cheer up a friend and play with the children,’ says my friend.

Jennifer is younger and more devil-may-care than her predecessor — she once admitted vomiting at an Oscars’ after-party with some pride in her voice. The romance is not yet three months old.

One thing’s for sure, though: if it doesn’t work out, Mr Martin, given that he’s rich, funny, handsome, discreet, kind, and emotionally literate, should have no trouble finding a replacement.

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