Ben Haenow interview: 'I'd see X Factor contestants crying on TV and thought I was never one of those people'

'I definitely tried to escape the world by drinking a little bit'

Ben Haenow, who won the eleventh series of The X Factor in 2014. (Charlie Forgham Bailey)

“I’d see The ‘X Factor’ contestants crying on the telly and thought I was never one of those people, that’s not me,” maintains the fast-talking Ben Haenow, who famously welled up on the talent show.

“But that is me and it was ugly crying with snot and everything.”

Is Haenow, last year’s X Factor victor, as nice as Simon Cowell’s Saturday-night entertainment kept on making out? Yes, he is. Very. He’s tactile, engaging, funny and unfailingly polite.

However, he’s also clearly media-savvy, his answers are concise, consistently upbeat (his responses are peppered with “amazing”, “unreal” and “inspiration”) and, in the main, uncontroversial. More disconcertingly, his manager is present (which is quite rare for a music interview) during our chat at Sony’s London headquarters.

Ben Haenow, who won the eleventh series of The X Factor in 2014 (Charlie Forgham Bailey)

“I look back on The X Factor and it still makes my stomach go, I’m clenched up thinking about it now,” claims the 30-year-old singer. “Emotionally I was a wreck by the end of the show and it was a crazy, crazy experience.”

Haewow, who still resides in Croydon with his mother (Rosanna) and brother (Alex), won the talent show with 57 per cent of the public vote, performing accomplished covers of “Highway to Hell”, “Jealous Guy”, and “Man in the Mirror”, which was a highlight.

He went on to bag last year’s Christmas No 1, with a cover (he promises he won’t make this a habit) of OneRepublic’s “Something I Need”.

His vocals are robust and his gravelly, soulful voice has a whiff of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis about it. It’s no surprise that his chief passion growing up was rock music (“Robert Plant was my absolute idol”), but his debut release (I was permitted to hear five tracks), Ben Haenow, isn’t a rock record. It’s a pop album, with some of the genre’s most esteemed songwriters involved. The well-groomed warbler is understandably enthused to have worked with them all in Los Angeles. In fact, he hasn’t got a bad word to say for anyone.

Haenow left school at 16, and worked for a brief time at Sainsbury’s before couriering film negatives to London studios in his white van. He had been gigging in and around Croydon and Camden with his older brother, Alex, in the rock act Lost Audio (which had a “heavy Maroon 5 sound”), for the decade leading up to his big break. But he nearly didn’t attend the audition. Cue an X Factor “narrative”.

“First audition was at the Emirates Stadium [in London] and we waited for 14 hours for the guys to say, ‘sorry we haven’t got time to see you’... They said: ‘Would you mind going to Newcastle and auditioning there?’ At the time I felt quite disheartened by it. I really didn’t want to go... The second time I waited around 18 hours and did my audition at half-past-midnight.” All four judges – Cowell, Mel B, a gushing Louis Walsh and Cheryl Fernandez-Versini – gave him the nod.

“For me it was a bit like an out-of-body experience, seeing those faces you’ve seen on TV,” he stresses. “It doesn’t feel real. I couldn’t tell you what happened in the audition until I saw it back. It was a mad, mad experience.”

Success has meant paying off his mother’s mortgage and welcoming his brother to play guitar with him at upcoming gigs: “To know that we’re going to grace the stage again is really, really great.”

But, “you’ve also got to be true to the people who voted for you. With the single “Second Hand Heart” we’ve stayed pretty true to that sort of [pop] vein. People aren’t going to be shocked.”

He’s particularly effusive about his mentor Simon Cowell: “He’s a great, great guy... such a nice bloke and genuine. If you have any troubles and or any worries he’s very willing to help out.”

On Haenow’s Wikipedia page it claims that when the singer was 14 he “suffered from depression and drank a bottle of vodka a day”. Is that true?

“I definitely tried to escape the world by drinking a little bit,” he says, his voice quieter than at any moment during our conversation. “Anyone in a creative industry has that side about them of being up and down,” he continues.

Right now Haenow is up, enthused and uncomplicated. “I want to keep it light-hearted” he says. He loves cooking, supports Crystal Palace, isn’t interested in politics and is focused on the new album, and another X Factor appearance.

“It’s felt like a long time coming, and I’m itching to get out there and talk about it,” Haenow says. “I’m fully charged and ready to go. Any exhaustion that I have is completely outweighed by excitement. I want to be knackered.”

“Second Hand Heart”, is out now; ‘Ben Haenow’ is out on 13 November