Why I turned down Pop Idol's Mr Nasty

IT is Monday afternoon and, as befits a boy who has just found out that his first single has gone to No 1, Darius Danesh has not been to bed for well over 24 hours.

"Would you go to bed if you were No 1?" he booms at me, when I suggest it might have been prudent to take a nap at some point. "I'm on a buzz! I'm loving every minute.

I've been working towards this moment all my life. Now I'm living my passion." He pauses, and furrows his brow. His face goes all mushy, his eyes like pools of chocolate sauce. "What is your passion, Rachel? Is it writing?

Does it make you happy? Does it give you a buzz? Is it creatively satisfying?"

Darius tends to forget that, in interviews, it is generally the journalist who asks the questions.

Though he is only 21 years old, he reminds me of one of those cheesy American self-help gurus. He drones on and on about "positive energy" and "living your dream" and affects an odd, overly grownup bedside manner as he hangs on your every word. Only his clothes remind you that he is a pop star.

Today, he is wearing a Palm Beach T-shirt, lots of silver jewellery, and a pair of trousers which, bizarrely, have a huge zip running right across their seat. "Don't worry," he says, unzipping away, "there's more material underneath ... at least ... I think there is."

Ah, the crazy excesses of pop. We are sitting in the Battersea offices of Darius's management company, which is full of girls who twitter at his every murmur. Beside us, on the wall, is a big poster of the man himself, shot on location in the Sierra Nevada. He looks mean and keen, a bit Tom Cruise, a bit Johnny Depp. In the flesh, however, he has quite a round baby face, though his eyelashes are extraordinarily long and he is very tall: when he kisses me by way of a greeting - what a smoothie - he has to lean down about two feet, and his trainers, I notice, are as big as barges. Not exactly a dish, but I can see a certain kind of girl falling for him.

SO, where was he when he heard the news that his song, Colourblind, had shot straight to the top of the charts? "I was at home with my family in Glasgow," he says, cosying up next to me on the sofa. "Someone called me. I was speechless. I just screamed. But I wanted to keep it a secret until the chart was on the radio. I didn't want my parents to find out in advance. At the exact moment when Foxy (Dr Fox, the DJ) announced I was at No 1, we were in the garden. As he said the words, my brother Cyrus drenched me with the garden hose. It was a special moment."

It was seven-year-old Cyrus, you will recall, who advised Darius, after his buttock-clenchingly awful appearances on ITV's Popstars, to lose his ponytail and goatee, so that by the time he re-emerged as a competitor in Pop Idol, he was the smooth-cheeked, neatly-quiffed (and slightly more modest) guy we know and love today. And, thank goodness, Cyrus is still doing his bit to keep his big brother on the straight and narrow. "Yeah," says Darius. "He says I might be a pop star, but I'm still the same guy I always was as far as he's concerned. My whole family are so supportive. That's why I spend as much time with them as possible."

So, have Nigel Lythgoe, who had to listen to Darius's acapella version of Baby One More Time during Popstars, and Simon Cowell, who judged Pop Idol, in which Darius came third, been in touch since he reached number one? "No, but what everyone forgets is that Nigel said he had no doubt I would have a number one before I was 25, so he was always with me. And Simon was very gracious when I turned down an offer from his record company." He is going to call his good friends Will Young and Gareth Gates - the other Pop Idol finalists - later. They're not competitive, he insists. They like "passing on the baton".

Turning down Cowell's offer must have taken real guts. "No, Rachel," says Darius, earnest as a bishop. "It didn't take guts. It made sense. I didn't want to go down that route where I was just doing cover versions. I wanted to be involved in the creative process. You see artists like Robbie Williams and George Michael and they've been through periods when they were hugely successful but very unhappy as people. I don't want that. I've never been happier since I left Pop Idol. That's because I looked at my record collection, and realised the artists I respect are David Gray, Craig David, Nelly Furtado and Dido - artists who write their own music."

But Dido's a bit boring, I say. Darius gives me a stern look. "No, I disagree. She is inspiring."

I wrinkle my nose. "So, what music do you like, Rachel?" he asks. Well, I'm quite a bit older than you, I say, so you probably won't really like - or even have heard of - my favourite bands. "Come on," he says, patient as a special needs teacher.

"Try me." Okay, I tell him, I still think The Smiths are really good.

Darius stares at me for a moment, moved almost to tears by my lack of taste and, for once, he is lost for words.

THE next few weeks are, he says, going to be very exciting. Tonight, he is on Top of the Pops, and then there is his album to write. When I ask him if he has a fallback position should his pop career come off the rails, he cannot quite grasp what I mean. "If I lost my voice and I didn't have the use of my arms so I couldn't play the guitar, that would be a personal tragedy," he says. He would, however, like to finish his aborted English degree at Edinburgh University "within the time frame of a five-album deal". Wouldn't the other students giggle and stare? "Hmm. There might be a few logistical problems."

At this point, just as he was telling me he was single and that Julia Roberts was the woman of his dreams, things got a bit manic - the sleepless night started to take its toll. First, Darius remembered that he is also number one in The Daily Star's celebrity chart - just above Big Brother's Jade Goody and about 10 notches ahead of David Bowie.

"Isn't it funny?" he says, brandishing the paper at me. "When things like this exist, there must be something wrong with the world ... though, actually, I think it's a good thing we have a celebrity chart, because on the next page there's the plight of the Middle East. My father is a doctor and he wanted me to be one, too. But I said, 'Dad, you make people healthy. I want to make them happy.'" Then, just as I was struggling to come to terms with this frankly nauseating concept, his video came on in the next room. Up he leapt. "Look! Oh my God! It's me!" For a few minutes, we both watch, open- mouthed, as Darius cavorts with a foxylooking model in the sunshine of the desert.

"This is so weird!" he wails. Finally, he insists on signing his new CD for me (I didn't ask - honest).

As he draws a smiley face on it, he asks me if I am a positive person.

Kind of, I say. What about you?

"Oh yes, Rachel. You can't get caught up in the negative. I made mistakes and, unfortunately, I made them on national TV. But now, I'm the luckiest boy on the block."

Copyright 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.