Daniel Radcliffe – Nigel Farndale

Daniel Radcliffe remains remarkably well adjusted for someone who, even at 23, still has to endure being called ‘Harry Potter’ every day. Just don’t ask about his bank balance…

Daniel Radcliffe bounds in to the hotel room like an eager puppy, all hand shakes and smiles for the assembled publicists, PAs and make-up artists. He is talking excitedly about the “gorgeous blonde” he just met in the corridor. She had asked if he could direct her to her room – not so subtly revealing her room number in the process – and he hadn’t been able to assist her. “But it wouldn’t have worked anyway,” he says, “because she was about 6ft 2in.” He’s joking, he has a girlfriend, but the point he makes about his height is an intriguing one. He is 5ft 5in. This is the first thing you notice about him, but luckily it is not the first thing the camera notices. Film cameras love a male lead whose head looks slightly too big for his body, and smaller actors are more likely to have this golden ratio than taller ones: think Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise and so on.
Today, at 23, Radcliffe looks limber and lean in jeans and checked shirt, with prominent dark eyebrows and wide blue eyes. Almost in parody of his cameo for Ricky Gervais’s Extras – he played himself as a horny teenager desperate to look rebellious – he tells me he is “addicted to nicotine” and needs to have a cigarette before we begin our interview. He rolls one up and smokes it out of the window.
I ask if this is a privilege of film stars. “They let me do it here so that I don’t have to stand outside,” he says. “There will be photographers, not for me, but just because they hang around smart hotels like this. It’s pretty much the only thing I exploit my position for, to be allowed to smoke inside.” Well I should think a lot of the time he doesn’t have to exploit his position because “his people” exploit it for him, clearing a path, booking the best table and so on. “I try not to let that stuff happen, but yes, it could be happening without me knowing. I don’t have an entourage in my personal life. I get driven here and I get driven home, but that’s it. I hate that kind of dropping a name to get a table stuff. Maybe it’s an English thing that there’s just some sort of embarrassment saying: ‘Hello, I’m Daniel Radcliffe, does that make a difference to you?’”
That he qualifies his comment about the photographers by saying that they won’t necessarily be waiting for him is telling. His modesty, self-deprecation and good manners are instantly apparent, and a great credit to his parents who managed to forge a well-rounded and functional personality out of potentially dysfunctional circumstances.
If anything, Radcliffe seems slightly too eager not to appear starry or arrogant. He tells me he never does drugs, having seen the effects they have on people. And after a few too many drinking binges that ended in blackouts he gave up alcohol in 2010. He has said in the past that he was a “really annoying, loud, inappropriate, messy drunk”.
Was it that when he was drunk he revealed a side of his personality he didn’t like? “It wasn’t that I became a nasty person at all, it was just that I felt that I was running away from thinking about things. It was a way of ignoring all my own fears about ‘Will I be able to keep going in this business after the Harry Potter series ends?’ You know, it was a way of, I think, coping with that. And it was a very bad way of coping with that.”
Well, there was life for him in the film world after Potter. On the morning I meet him the papers are all carrying stories about the film he starred in earlier this year: The Woman in Black, which has become the highest-grossing British horror in 20 years, taking more than $127 million around the world. The stories, which he hasn’t had a chance to see, are about how The Woman in Black has become the most complained about film of the year, because even though it was 12A, parents took their young children to it. “Oh that,” he says, looking relieved when I tell him why he is in the papers. “I do take a small tincture of pride about it being the most complained-about film. I would have thought from the trailer that you could sense what kind of a movie it was going to be. I said at the time, if your kid is under 12, I would advise them not to see this film. Apparently there was a girl at the British premier who fainted and when I heard that, I was, like, ‘we did something right’.” (A film he stars in next year may prove even more traumatic for Harry Potter fans; in Horns, he plays a man who suddenly sprouts devil horns, and who may or may not be a killer.)
That film was something of a rite of passage for Radcliffe, an emphatic signal that he had moved on from Harry Potter. “There was a part of me in some scenes that was slightly scared of my own face, because I know that my face is…” He trails off. “I’m scared of any sort of expression looking like a Harry expression, and so I think that the journey for me in the last year is kind of about acceptance, of going, ‘This is my face and it was also the face that played Harry’. I have to stop fighting that aspect, and not worry about being expressive at times. As far as I can tell, most actors’ main motivation is self-doubt and neuroses.”
I ask if he felt a great weight on his shoulders as an 11 year-old when he was chosen as the star of what was expected to be a blockbuster franchise? I mean, that first film could have failed; people could have said it isn’t as good as the book and the whole thing could have fizzled out. Was it stressful? “Not at that age. I didn’t start to feel that pressure until much later. I think probably, that’s one of the best things about Chris Columbus [the director], he made the process so enjoyable we never thought of it as anything but fun, and it really wasn’t until the third film that I started going ‘OK, now I want to really dedicate myself to this and start learning about acting and getting better’.’’
That he was working alongside some of the greats of British film and theatre – Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, Gary Oldman – meant that he was learning from the best. Indeed there was little point in him going to Rada after he left school – not that he went to school, having had tutors on the set instead. But what about university? “I got my ASs but dropped out before taking my As because I figured university is something you do to find out what you want to do, and I knew what I wanted to do, and I was already doing it.” His co-star Emma Watson (Hermione) was able to combine the two, though. Did he not fancy doing that? “Well fair play to her, but I don’t think that I could have done that. And bear in mind, I did well in my GCSEs and my AS-levels, I got good grades and I was happy with them, but Emma’s grades made mine look pretty f—— shabby, you know. Emma is seriously academic.”
Besides, he is a voracious reader of poetry and fiction, as I discover when he tells me about Kill Your Darlings, the low budget but artistically uncompromised film he made after The Woman in Black, which is due to be released next year. He plays the poet Allen Ginsberg and his knowledge about and passion for the Beat Generation is certainly impressive; Radcliffe can talk at length about Ginsberg’s journey from middle-class conformity to the world of “rich, moneyed libertines”.
He’s also amusing about what it was like playing a gay man. “I was in a position that I had not been in before,” he recalls. “It was slightly odd, but that film was shot so rapidly there was no time for prudishness or for worry.” On the subject of his love life – he’s straight, by the way – he says it is much easier dating girls who are in the film world because “they can be relaxed about all the time you have to be on location, and the love scenes you have to do. Where you’re kissing someone else, that takes a bit of getting used to, for everybody. And even when I went out with an actress who was having to do a love scene with somebody, I was like ‘Erm… I’m not sure I’m going to watch that’. It is always a weird thing, there’s no getting away from that.
“The Ginsberg film wasn’t so much of a problem in that respect because it was mainly men that I was interested in for that.”
Before that film is released there will be another literary outing, this time a TV miniseries. A Young Doctor’s Notebook is a black comedy set during the Russian Revolution adapted from several short stories by his favourite Russian writer, Mikhail Bulgakov. His co-star is Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, who will play the same character, a doctor, in an older guise. “I think they were going to release it in the spring of next year,” says Radcliffe, who adds that he’s “immensely flattered” that he might one day turn into Hamm. “And then they were, like, ‘Let’s release it at Christmas, because there’s lots of snow in it’. It’s not remotely festive, but it’s snowing all the time.”
During filming he says he learnt quite a lot about how to amputate limbs. “And I do think I could probably perform a tracheotomy now.”
In terms of his role choices, you have to admire the determination with which he has avoided anything that can be compared to Harry Potter, especially when you consider how much pressure he must have been under to consolidate on his success in that role. Before the Ginsberg and the Bulgakov he had an even more unexpected stage debut, at the age of 18 in 2007. It was in Equus, Peter Shaffer’s controversial play about sexual deviation.
“That was a signal of intent,” he says now. “Looking back, that’s probably the most important choice I’ve ever made, in terms of things outside of Potter, because it showed people that I’m not just here to capitalise on the fame that I’ve got from Potter for as long as I can. That’s not what I’m about. I’m playing a much longer game than that.”
The part entailed a nude scene that prompted the inevitable headline “Harry gets his wand out”. But it was worth it. Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph hailed Radcliffe’s “dramatic power” and “electrifying stage presence”. For most men, I say, exposing yourself in front of a crowd of strangers is the stuff of nightmares. So what was it like? “It’s odd the first couple of times you do it, but it does just become a job. Looking back, I do think I was probably braver then than I am now. I spoke to a friend who did Hair, and he said: ‘I like getting naked on stage, it’s fun’ and I said: ‘You were in Hair! You got naked for, like, a minute, and it’s an ensemble with loads of naked people. Mine was on my own and lasted 10 minutes!’ ”
His life so far is hard to empathise with, I say – he’s the richest person under 30 in this country, for example – but I wonder whether his teens were all that different from everyone else’s. When I was that age, as I recall, I was rather self-conscious. Was self-consciousness ever an option for him, given that he was by then used to having his face projected on cinema screens and billboards across the land?
“You can still be self-conscious in my position. And shy. Shyness displays itself differently in me. I think it’s more an awkwardness. Like when I go to those events, like the Baftas, or like I was invited to this thing called the Met Ball, and I ended up having a good night because I took a friend, but normally I feel very awkward at events like that.”
Because? “Because I don’t feel that I’m good at small talk, and I’m not… You know, meeting people in that fleeting way, I never know how to give an accurate impression of myself, so I just become nervous, and stumbley.”
When people recognise him in the street, do they say “Hey, there’s Harry Potter!” or do they say “There’s Daniel Radcliffe”? “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get Harry Potter at all. Of course I do. But you know what? I’d say the split is now rather encouragingly in favour of Daniel Radcliffe, which is rather lovely. I walked past two girls on a bench the other day, and I heard them both go ‘Oh my God, it’s Daniel Radcliffe’, and every time that happens I think: ‘Yesss!’ Not because they recognise me, because they use my name.”
One’s teenage years are awkward enough without having to live them in a spotlight, I say. Did he have people around him helping him deal with the pressures of fame – therapists, I suppose I mean? “You know, the people I talk to are my mum and dad. They are amazing people, and were always great at making me aware of which parts of it were real and which weren’t, and making me aware of which parts were important and which were not.”
It helped that they were in the business, he says. His father, Alan, is a former literary agent, who gave up his job to chaperone his son when he was chosen from thousands to play Harry Potter. His mother, Marcia, is a casting agent, who put him forward for that fateful audition.
So even though he was growing up on film sets, where the whole world was apparently revolving around him, his parents managed to keep his ego in check? “I don’t think that’s in me to be honest. I’ve not got… I’ve always had, like, from the age of about 11, I’ve had such an intolerance for bad behaviour of actors that I don’t think I was ever going to be that person.” What about the financial side of things? “I have an amazing lawyer, and I have my mum, and I have my accountant, who was my mum’s accountant when she was young. He’s called Keith and he’s also brilliant.”
I imagine Keith knows how much young Daniel is worth, but does Daniel know? “I do not, no. I hear things said, but I don’t know if any of them are true. And I never want to seem ungrateful for it all, but the money is not a motivating factor in my life. Also,” he adds with a laugh, “I would be the last person who should be left in charge of it, frankly. Because I am so terrible at maths. Not that I’d blow it or anything, but I just wouldn’t do anything with it.”
Thanks to his mother’s investment skills, then, he owns several properties in London and New York, as well as an impressive art collection including works by Damien Hirst and Craigie Aitchison. His personal fortune has been estimated as being not unadjacent to £50 million. Should the estimate be higher or lower? “I’m not going to play this guessing game,” he says politely but firmly. “I’m just not.”
His politeness seems to be one of his defining characteristics. For his own part he has, in the past, described himself as nerdy, hyperactive and skittish, and you can see little hints of those things in his personality, too. But no one seems to have a bad word to say about him, and that, all things considered, is quite an achievement.
It is time for his photograph and so we return to the other room. A change of shirt is needed and Radcliffe strips off to reveal an impressive six-pack, and biceps that can only have come from hours in the gym. And, yes, he does this completely without self-consciousness.

James Blunt

30 March 2021 5:06 pm8 February 2022By Nigel FarndaleIn Interview0 Comments

It could be the homes around the world; his military bearing; or that he’s our biggest musical export since Elton. For whatever reason, being called annoying, a philanderer or – worse – middle class doesn’t exactly keep James Hillier Blount awake at night. Nigel Farndale met him

It’s not the sight of the groupies that haunts me, but the sound, or rather the absence of sound, as they ghost past us on their way up the stairs to the dressing-room. It takes me a moment to figure out that the reason they aren’t talking to each other is that they don’t know each other. One of the band members, the keyboard player, I think, has picked them from the audience on the basis of their looks. Half-a-dozen of them, all in their late teens and early twenties, and all, surprisingly, in pretty frocks, as if they were going to a Sunday school meeting. They have been separated from their friends like lambs weaned from their mothers. The silence of the lambs.

The ‘us’ they are filing past is James Blunt and me. He has a bottle of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and not a hair in place – tousled just so, like a Renaissance painting of John the Baptist – but they don’t realise it’s him because he has changed out of the suit he was wearing on stage and is now in jeans, T-shirt and leather jacket, as well as a pink feather boa and star-shaped novelty sunglasses. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is the end of the day; we need to go back to the start, well, to the middle, when the seats are empty and the Texan sun is at its most unforgiving.

A barefoot and unshaven Blunt is wearing normal sunglasses and shorts as he plays his piano, strums his guitar and sings his plaintive songs into the microphone for the sound check, all the while looking out with his soulful eyes over an empty, open-air arena in Houston. At 5ft 7in, he’s not a tall man, but he has presence and an unaffected manner – a certain maturity, too, one that you wouldn’t normally associate with a pop star in the ascendant.

But then he is 34 and this is his second career, his first being as an officer in the Household Cavalry. He joined after graduating from Bristol University with a degree in sociology. He became a champion skier for the Army and not only saw active service in Kosovo, but also guarded the Queen Mother’s coffin when she was lying in state.

Tonight he will be supporting Sheryl Crow, though, since his second album ‘All the Lost Souls’ and the single from it, ‘1973’, went straight to number one in America, he is arguably the bigger act these days. Indeed, not since Elton John has there been a more successful British singer-songwriter in the States.

His first album, ‘Back to Bedlam’, also went to number one over here, as it did in 18 other countries, making it the biggest-selling album of the millennium. It even entered the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest-selling album in one year. But it was his first single that really put him on the map. You’re Beautiful became the sound of that summer. It was everywhere, and still is – having become a favourite at weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs. I even heard a brass band playing it at an agricultural show in the Yorkshire Dales this summer.

As well as millions of sales, James Blunt has won Brit awards, Ivor Novello awards, MTV awards and various Grammy nominations. In terms of credibility, he’s headlined at Glastonbury and won the respect of the world-weary music press. Yet not everyone loves him, as he points out when we get something to eat in the canteen area back stage.

‘After Back to Bedlam really started selling,’ he says, ‘there was this sudden aggression towards me in the UK, for whatever reason, and that focused my mind, made it clear to me what I was doing and why I wanted to do it. I write songs for myself. I don’t write them for you, or for anyone else, I write them because I have experiences that I need to process. I don’t have the answers all the time, but I do have lots of questions, and I express them in the songs I write.’

He is, I think, alluding to a poll last year of ‘the most annoying things in life’, which put him at number four, just behind cold-callers and queue-jumpers. ‘I haven’t met anyone who voted in the poll, have you?’ he says when I mention this. ‘That poll probably came from a website that was after some publicity. You and I could do the same poll very quickly right now and it would count as a poll. We could do one about annoying newspapers, for example. I promise the Sunday Telegraph wouldn’t be in my list. My parents take it.’

His father, a retired colonel in the Army Air Corps, manages his son’s finances. His mother arranged the purchase of his six-bedroom villa in Ibiza (he also has a chalet in Verbier and recently bought a place in Chelsea). ‘I’m not married,’ he says, ‘and so the support structure in my life is my parents. I’m closer to them now than I have ever been.’

He certainly isn’t married, as the photographs of him emerging from nightclubs with various high-profile women on his arm attest. Tara Palmer-Tomkinson was probably the best known socialite, Jessica Sutta, of the Pussycat Dolls, the most glamorous. He also seems to be photographed regularly cavorting on beaches with bikini-clad models such as Petra Nemcova, whom he dated and then dumped – unceremonious dumping being his way of ending relationships, according to the tabloids. He once said he found himself in a swimming pool in LA with nine naked women. ‘I was the only bloke. It was the only time I wished my mates were there, purely to spectate. I had arrived. It was a moment.’

Now he says of the tabloid interest in his peripatetic love life: ‘Last week I went to my home in Ibiza and was photographed by the paparazzi in my swimming trunks with girls. What is the point of that? I’m not that bothered, but maybe the media should be concentrating more on global warming or the Russian invasion of Georgia.

‘Looking at me in my swimming trunks is not a great sight. It’s a waste of time. There generally is a long lens pointing at me wherever I go, these days. I’m comfortable with it. I appreciate how things work. But my record label said something about my always being photographed coming out of nightclubs and I thought, “But this is what I do. I was doing it before the second album came out, so what is different now? You didn’t tell me to stop then.” I’m not going to change my life because of these people. I don’t see why I should.’

His label also gets him to dye his grey hairs and be enigmatic about his love life, which is an old tactic dating back to the Beatles – they had to pretend they didn’t have wives and girlfriends so that fans could fantasise they were in with a chance.

Actually, at the time of going to press, Blunt seems to be going out again with one of his old flames, Verity Evetts, an Oxford-educated barrister. He has also stayed friendly with some of his other exes, the socialites at least. He told one – an ex who got married not long ago – that he doesn’t feel ‘centred’ at the moment and would like to get married as well. Then again, he also said that he never tires of singing You’re Beautiful night after night because it gets him laid night after night.

Either way, he tells me he has grown used to the idea that his mother will probably find out from the papers what he has been up to, and with whom, before he has had a chance to tell her. ‘And my [two] sisters are quick to email me about things in the papers, laughing their heads off. I get healthy, ritual abuse from them, and give it back myself.’

As we are talking, I can’t decide whether the way Blunt smiles all the time is disarming or disturbing. He’s like a victim of a religious cult, smiling at the beginning of the sentence and at the end. I guess he has a lot to smile about, but also I sense a great deal of insecurity to disguise.

Then, I’m distracted by the sight of Sheryl Crow playing table tennis across the room. She has been holding her adopted son in one arm as she bats with the other, and now, even more distractingly, she is heading straight for us. ‘Are we going to have one of our little conversations on stage again tonight, James?’ she says. ‘That flirting thing. I think it worked well last night.’

They discuss the duet they will sing – a cover of Cat Stevens’s The First Cut is the Deepest – then we both watch her shimmy away, her blonde curls bobbing. ‘She’s very down to earth,’ he says. ‘I’d met her a couple of times, which was why she asked me on this tour. We do end up playing a lot of table tennis on the road. We’ve done 117 shows so far this year, in 117 cities, and there are a lot of hours to fill in the day.’

As he sleeps on his tour bus with his band, one city tends to blur into another. When I joke that he is in Cincinnati now, he looks genuinely confused. ‘No, this is?… Oh, right. Actually, I always get the tour manager to say where we are just as I’m going on stage. I still managed to get it wrong the other night, saying “Hello Dallas” when I meant Austin. I’m surprised I got out alive.’

He is funny on the subjects of things that go wrong. ‘People are normally surprised by my show, which is more energetic than you might think. Jumping on the piano. Jumping out into the audience and running up and down the aisle high-fiving them. But going off the stage can be quite dangerous. I broke my finger once. My legs carried on when I jumped off, and I smacked down on the ground. The spotlight was on me, and when I got back to the piano I hit the wrong note and thought, “Why did I do that?” And I looked down and saw it was because my finger was broken, sticking out an angle. Look,’ he says holding it up. ‘It’s still crooked.’

On another occasion, in Chicago, he jumped 8ft off the stage. ‘When I began running to the audience, a security guard stuck his arm out and I thought, “Does he want a hug?” Then next thing I know he’s rugby-tackled me. He wouldn’t release me and I was screaming in his ear, “I’m the f—ing singer.” I had to wait for the other guards to pull him off.’

I would have thought Blunt’s training in unarmed combat would have helped. I presume he still works out. ‘No, never. Couldn’t handle it. Too boring. I am a hyperactive person though.’ He likes an adrenaline rush, as well, having recently bought an 1100cc Moto Guzzi V11 Sport motorbike. There’s also the skiing, which he still does, and the riding. Actually, he tells me, he never really liked horses before joining the Life Guards. So why did he join that particular regiment?

‘Well, it is a reconnaissance regiment.’ But they are all so tall in the Life Guards, did that not make him self-conscious? ‘Some are. The Foot Guards tend to be taller regiments, though. The Life Guards take a few shrimps, as well. Besides, they are on horses, so height isn’t so important. Also being in that regiment had the benefit of being in Knightsbridge. I got a chance to be in London and meet people in the music scene.’ And groupies, as it happens.

As he paraded up and down the Mall in plumed helmet and shiny breastplate, girls would stick their phone numbers down his knee-length boots. But it was his time in Kosovo that really made girls swoon. He used to strap his guitar to the outside of his tank, because there wasn’t room for it inside. He had learnt to play the violin at five, the piano at seven and the guitar at 14, while a pupil at Harrow.

He writes his songs on piano and guitar. ‘But mainly guitar because it is easier to carry around. It’s like a child messing around with a toy. If a tune comes to me I don’t record it instantly. I think if I remember it, then it must be worth remembering, and if I forget it, then it was forgettable.’

Does he have any anxiety dreams about forgetting lines or chords? ‘Not yet. Perhaps I will tonight. Perhaps you’ve jinxed me. But audiences aren’t judgmental, and if things go wrong and you can look them in the eye, that is fine. The only people who are judgmental are the journalists. I will be conscious of you being there in the audience judging me.’

Blimey. Sorry about that. Is it true he signs breasts? ‘Not that I remember. Not that I’m fussy what I sign. A lot of men started coming to the shows after I appeared on Top Gear last year. That was such fun. I spun the car five times. I thought I might as well make the most of it. I am competitive.’

He recorded one of the fastest laps, but I’m surprised blokes didn’t think him manly before that, given his tour of duty in Kosovo. ‘It’s because I sing songs that are heart-on-your-sleeve and therefore I must be overly emotional. Nothing I can do about it. I could pose more, but I am comfortable with my masculinity.’

He has said that his lyrics are autobiographical, in which case, are we to assume that the lyric on his new album, ‘I killed a man in a far away land’, means he killed a man in a far away land? I only ask because in the past he has said that he would never try to exploit what he went through, what he saw. ‘You should ask any soldier how many lives he has saved. How they do it is no one else’s business. What I took from my experience in Kosovo is that you are told from one day to the next who your enemy is and it keeps changing. That’s what is happening in Iraq, too. I believe in looking people in the eye, looking for the common humanity.’

He is a great believer in looking people in the eye. He will use the phrase again later and it seems to reveal a Christ complex, or a John the Baptist one. That direct and challenging stare of his. It would also explain the hair.

It is time for him do some photographs before he goes on stage and, endearingly, he says he is ‘not fussed’ about the grooming he is offered before they are taken.

On stage his features contort with passion when he sings. The big video screen goes in tight on his face. His voice is by turns soft and tremulous and forceful, but always high. Having seen him in concert once before, a couple of years ago, I notice the tone of his banter has changed.

‘Wow it’s hot tonight,’ he says now. ‘I’m surprised any of you are wearing any clothes. We could all take them off and get friendly.’ It is suggestive, designed to get the teenage girls in the audience screaming. Before he used to joke about his ‘girlie voice’ and taking helium to get it that way, and being ‘a bit wet’ and the ‘housewives’ favourite’. I think now he has realised that, actually, he is a proper musician, a popular one, too, and that he doesn’t need to apologise for it.

Afterwards, back in the dressing-room, he strips to the waist as he talks because he wants to take a shower before going back on to do his duet with Sheryl Crow. ‘Things got a bit hairy out there when I jumped into the crowd,’ he says. ‘Did you see that? Some thought it was some kind of sport to grab me.’

I watch his duet from the side of the stage and notice he whispers something in Sheryl Crow’s ear and then she starts running her hands over his trousers suggestively, patting them. Afterwards, I ask what he said. ‘”Is now a good time to ask for your phone number?” She was checking my pockets, pretending to look for a pen.’

He shows me round the gold-coloured tour bus where he will be sleeping tonight as they drive to their next gig in Dallas. It is full of hi-tech equipment and is nicely air-conditioned but there isn’t much space in the bunks. ‘We do live in close proximity,’ he says. ‘Some of us stay up late. This is the crew end, they have to get up early.’

Where do the groupies go? ‘Never have groupies on here. Never. They’d only get in if we invited them in. But we’d only ever invite friends in.’

Does he sleep OK? I heard he has to take sleeping pills. ‘It is a bit of a rough sleep, but better than a hotel and taking planes all the time because you have to get to the airport two hours early, which is miserable. Then your flight gets delayed.’

He is drinking champagne from a plastic cup. ‘This is for your benefit,’ he says. ‘The tour management went out and bought a bottle of champagne because he thought I should be seen drinking it. Better for my image. Isn’t that sweet? Normally, we drink vodka and beer. In fact, I think I’d rather have a beer, now. Want one?’ He opens a well-stocked fridge then takes me to the back of the bus where there is some seating space. He has one small case which he pulls out from a cupboard. It continues a few pairs of socks, T-shirts and a spare pair of jeans. No photographs or mementos. ‘This is all I have for 14 months on the road,’ he says. ‘I’m not known for style.’

Does he know how much he is worth? ‘No I don’t, not very interested in it to be honest. I travel with hand luggage only. That is why I always seem to be wearing the same clothes in photographs. If a tabloid says my clothes aren’t fashionable or my hair looks stupid, I really don’t worry about it. Don’t have any hair gel.’

In London, he takes the Tube or the bus. He prefers pubs to restaurants. When he goes to Ibiza, he flies easyJet. Still, that’s at home. Presumably on the road he can afford to be more self-indulgent.

Another lyric that we can only assume is autobiographical is ‘I’ve taken a s—load of drugs’. It is. Though his only comment on the subject is that he has ‘a comfortable relationship with drugs’. His relationship with fame is less comfortable. Oscar Wilde said there were two forms of tragedy: not getting what you want, and getting it. Is that how it felt for him when he went to number one? ‘Actually, I don’t think I had been dreaming about it. Certainly, I hadn’t anticipated being so recognisable so quickly.

‘I do remember getting a phone call from the record company, who said both the single and the album have gone to number one, and thinking, “S—, this is not what I expected.” I hadn’t prepared myself for it. Number two is great. Number two is nice. I sensed then it would mean having to change from being a musician to being a celebrity and that that would be a change for the worse. Fame doesn’t affect me, but it does affect everyone else around me. As for celebrity, it is the worst invention of the modern world. Gossip columns treat your life as if it were a cartoon. Relationships reduced to cartoons.’

Although there are other public-school bands around at the moment – Radiohead, Coldplay – Blunt seems to have suffered more than most from a perception that he is too posh to be credible. His family name is Blount (and his middle name Hillier), but he changed it to Blunt to sound, well, blunter and more proletarian.

When he tells me he would nevertheless still send a son of his to Harrow – ‘I think I would. I think I would. Public schools make individuals rather than sheep’ – I ask what he makes of the mood change now that the old Etonian David Cameron has made it OK to be posh. ‘Is it? I must come back to Britain immediately. Is it really safe to come back?

‘It’s not a dirty word to be posh, people come up to me and no one gives a damn if I’m posh. It’s about having a normal conversation and looking people in the eye.’

We head back to the dressing-room where he puts on his feather boa and novelty sunglasses then we wander back downstairs to have a word with Sheryl Crow, who is signing autographs. This is the moment at which the keyboard player says: ‘This way to the good-time room girls’ and the silent groupies dutifully appear.