Darius: If at first you don't succeed

He was the legendary loser, the wannabe whose delivery of 'Hit me baby, one more time' struck fear into the hearts of 'Popstars' judges and television viewers alike. But Darius bounced back, and found stardom in the follow-up, 'Pop Idol'. Now he's, gasp, a respected musician. And what's more, he's got lovely knees

Darius was the complete prat on Popstars who sang "Hit me baby, one more time" in a creepy falsetto, and kept banging on absurdly about "all the lurve in the room" and how his voice was a "gift" that he was obliged to share with the world, and he was sort of like that bloke David Brent from The Office, only worse, what with the ponytail and goatee (never a good look, even on goats), and everyone laughed at him, even in the street, but then he turned up again on Pop Idol, and came third, and I think everyone thought that was that, but then, blow me, if he didn't sign a five-album deal with Mercury and put out a first single that went straight to No 1, and then an album that went straight in at No 5, and, blow me again, if he didn't get voted among the Top Ten Most Desirable Men by Tatler and...

Well, what does all this prove exactly? That Darius does not live by my own particular motto: if at first you don't succeed, give up, accept you are a total loser, and promptly take to drink? I don't know. All I do know is that this year's Deborah Ross Award for Miraculous Reinvention was going to be a bitterly fought contest between Jamie Oliver and Tony Blackburn, but now I can see that Darius might just manage a last-minute, triumphant snatch.

We meet at a hotel in Glasgow, his home town, where some kind of Radio Clyde charity do is going on in a ballroom jam-packed with balloons and pissed corporate suits and an equal number of pissed blondes in off-the-shoulder sequiny things. Here, Darius is introduced by the compère as "Scotland's greatest pop star" and "what you all want in your Christmas stockings, hey girls?". He performs a couple of songs – "Colour Blind", his first single, and "Rushes", his second, both of which he had some hand in writing (which I think he'd probably like me to point out). Both seem to go down very well. He does have a really rather wonderful Vegas voice. His voice has never really been at issue. Then, it's up to a private room for the interview and... wow! Darius is... bloody gorgeous!

Excellent skin. He's half-Iranian, half-Scottish, and the result is a kind of delicious, crème caramel sheen. Dark, Bournville-chocolate eyes – God, he's beginning to sound like a sweet trolley... I'm rubbish at this descriptive lark – framed by extraordinary, sweeping eyelashes. He has sensibly ditched the goatee. And the ponytail. (Never a good look, except on My Little Pony, who has enough natural style to carry it off, unlike David Seaman, say, or umpteen porn directors.) Tall? He's amazingly tall, about 50ft I would estimate, with big, strong, manly knees. I know about the knees because, for some reason, he is wearing a kilt today. Such knees, actually, are not something you should really show a woman at my time of life, as the excitement might be too much, especially on top of the drink and everything.

I ask him what his beauty secrets are. He says that he has a stylist now. OK, I say, what have you learnt from your stylist? "Less is more," he says. Shamingly, I compliment him on his extraordinary, sweeping eyelashes. Fabulous eyelashes, I say. "It is kind of you to say so," he says, rather formally. He then adds that he hated them when he was younger, and was always teased by his mates. "So I cut them off, but the girl I fancied was really horrified. So I raided the bins – my mum recycles newspaper, and I'd cut them over newspaper – and so I opened all the papers, found the lashes, and I got a Valentine's Day card and and poured the lashes in and sent them to the girl. She still wouldn't go out with me." I resist complimenting him on his knees, obviously.

His determination – to come back, again and again, as he has done – must surely be quite awesome. Or is it simply a lack of embarrassment? A thick skin, as well as a crème caramel one? Whatever, he's properly going for it. His last day off was on 19 August, his 22nd birthday. He has an impacted wisdom tooth. It's agony, but he won't give in to it. "I can honestly say that it's been torture this week. It's growing forward and hitting my nerve... you can't sleep. I didn't realise that pain can make you retch. I was going to get it out today, but if I got it out today I wouldn't be able to work for the next two weeks."

He's having them out over Christmas, when he has got a few days off with mum and dad, both of whom are doctors, "so I can have them to snuggle up to". I ask how he accounts for such determination. He says: "If you have a passion for something, it can carry you, and sometimes you don't know how you get the strength to stand, and then you realise it's not your legs you are standing on at all, you are being carried by something else." Oh. Right. I see. No, in fact, I don't. What is that something else? "If you have faith or passion for whatever is the essence of you."

Darius can be very David Brent-ish indeed. I'm not sure he realises that for a profundity to be a profundity, it helps if it says something profound. I ask if he minds not having had a day off since 19 August. "If you enjoy what you do, you don't see it as work. The last two and a half years have built up my understanding of what the music business is like, and what it's about, and what is expected of the artist, and I've prepared myself for the kind of artist I want to be and the kind of artist that allows me to breathe as a person and grow as a performer and songwriter..."

I think if we did have a relationship, it might have to be based purely on sex.

Darius insists that the Darius on Popstars wasn't the real Darius. "I taught myself to play the guitar at 13, and started writing songs at the same time. I am a singer/songwriter. Anyone who saw me on the programme didn't know who I was. They saw this cocky, absurd caricature of a tough young guy." And that wasn't you?

He says that he invented that character because he thought that it was what was wanted. "And that's the worst thing you can do. Horrible. I cringed at the time, but I laugh now when I look back because I have hindsight." What did this experience teach you? "I learned that the main thing was the simplest thing: that in the pursuit of happiness, which is what we are all looking for, you have to be true to yourself and honest. I had a good look at myself in macro [sic] and realised I was trying to be something I wasn't. If I was honest, I'd just be writing my songs – I'm a songwriter – and pursuing that and finding a means to an end, and I realised that the first time I suppose part of me felt I was used by the system, and I didn't understand the system and, in that respect, I was very naive."

Yup, he's lost me, too. The knees are still nice though. Perhaps we could have a relationship based purely on knees.

How did it feel, Darius, to be ridiculed so? "I think the nearest analogy I could give you is that it felt like I'd been winded. I remember playing rugby at school. I was chosen for the team because I was tall, not because I was very good at it. The other guys felt I hadn't earned my place, so, as soon as I had the ball, they'd organised a double tackle and I was hit harder than I'd ever been hit before and was quite literally knocked off my feet, but I wouldn't let go of the ball and I landed on my back with three 15-stone Scots on me and I was winded... and I likened it to that.

"But when I remembered my schooldays, I remembered that I didn't sit there and moan about it. I didn't lick my wounds and walk away with my tail between my legs. [Simultaneously?] I got back on my feet and learned to play the game, and, once I knew the rules, I played the game. I did not let the game play me."

Adorable eyelashes. There's no getting away from that.

I try to bring him back on track by saying that failing Popstars was probably a narrow escape. I mean, Hear'say didn't last very long, did they? And I think that even the apostrophe has decided to go solo now. As for Kym, isn't she starting completely afresh with a new band called "I Hate That Myleene Klass"? No bitterness there, then? He says: "I tend to focus on where I am. I don't see there is any point in 'what if'. We could 'what if' every single crossroads we meet, at any stage in our lives... the 'what if' scenario will bamboozle you. It's much more important to be content where you are. I realise I wouldn't have sat comfortably as a puppet. I'm free from branding. I'm my own brand."

Yet, after Popstars, and becoming, well, there is no nice way of putting this – a national laughing-stock – you went for it again with Pop Idol? Why, if you'd decided this sort of thing wasn't for you? "I wanted to work with the best management, the best TV people, the best PR, the best sound people. I wanted to perform to a large audience and get feedback so I could assimilate all these various parts of the record business, all the cogs that make up the machinery, so when I finally got my hands on the keys I could drive the damn thing and enjoy it and further myself as a..." Songwriter? "...songwriter."

And play the game, rather than have the game play you? "Exactly!"

OK, a bit of background. His father, Booth, is the Iranian, and a consultant gastroenterologist, while his mother, Avril, is the Scot and a GP. Booth's father, Darius's grandfather, was an ambassador under the Shah of Iran, but the family lost everything in 1979 when the Shah was overthrown. By this time, though, Booth had already moved to Scotland, to train as a doctor. Darius attended a private school, Glasgow Academy, where, he says, he was bullied quite a lot. "It was during the Gulf War and they said that I was a gypsy and an Arab. I tried to explain that I'm actually not from Iraq, that I'm from Iran, not that I would take offence if I was from Iraq, but the Iraq-Iran war was one in which I lost a lot of family members. It made me realise at a young age that ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance causes most of the problems in the world. They called me Saddam. I thought: if only you knew what this madman has done to my family."

I wonder how he feels about the possibility of the Americans bombing Iraq. "I have strong feelings but choose not to discuss them because I feel that my purpose in the public arena is music and I have my private life. Unfortunately, people don't know the half of it. If I didn't have a private life and didn't have loves and hates in politics and in society's foibles, then I wouldn't have my music, and my music wouldn't be interesting. It would be bland or ordinary."

He is the David Brent of pop, surely.

He is very proud of his album, Dive In. "It's a bunch of great tracks. Steve (Lillywhite, the producer) said: 'Darius, by Jove, you've done it. You've come up with the feelgood album of 2003.' I said, let's not run before we can walk, but he said, 'No, I've listened to the final edit, and you've stretched yourself, not just as a songwriter but as a producer'. I produced a song as well. I wanted to take the plunge, not just because of being an artist, but because I enjoyed being able to craft something I'm proud of. Hopefully, what I have to show for this year is an album of songs that hark back to my love of music when I was a boy listening to my mum's Beatles collection."

Oasis are fans, he says. Noel, he continues, once said to him: "Top tunes, man. Respect." He was pleased with that. "It sent a shiver from the base of my spine to the top of my legs." (I don't think he picked up much anatomical info from his parents.)

So, anyway, that's Darius Danesh for you: pop star; philosopher ("People always ask: Where will it end? I ask: Where did it all begin?"); delicious knee-owner; SINGER/ SONGWRITER; and, possibly, all-round creative genius. "The only real thing is the music, which I keep coming back to, because that is what I am about."

Going back to that "essence of you" thing, I'm trying to think what mine might be. Pure gin? Probably.

'Dive In' is available on Mercury records