This city slicker

CRAIG David is a very difficult person to interview. Not because he's all showbizzy and awkward, but because he's so darn friendly, nice, down-to-earth and chatty that, before you know it, you've gone completely off topic and are in the middle of an animated conversation about where precisely you live in Southampton in relation to his primary school.

And while this might make for a pleasant trip down memory lane, it doesn't fall into the category of 'critical questions' that you have to squeeze into a five-minute interview before he takes to the stage at a packed gig.

I meet Craig in his tiny dressing room, which doubles as the men's changing room at the leisure centre where he's about to perform.

He's as warm and friendly as you would like to believe, shaking hands with the photographer and giving me a polite peck on the cheek - in fact, he's exactly as you like to imagine you would be if you were famous.

We're meeting in the run-up to his gig at the Bournemouth International Centre tomorrow, Sunday, October 5, and a special free gig at the Rose Bowl near Southampton, on Monday, October 6.

"It was going to be really hard for me to get down to Southampton to perform before I leave to go on the rest of my world tour so we were thinking about how I could get down there," he explains. "The Rose Bowl seemed like a nice place to perform acoustically and for free and at the same time support the Racism Just Ain't Saintly campaign the following day. I was involved in the Get Racism Out of Football campaign when I was 14 and it's a nice sort of come around."

I check his room for riders - the things that pop stars demand when they go on tour, like only blue Smarties or a giant platter of sushi arranged in alphabetical order - but all that is visible is a small table with some snack food and water on it.

"Half that stuff, I don't know how it got in here. I don't know where them chocolates came from for a start," he laughs when I ask about the spread.

"I usually ask for fruit and water. I've got my humidifier to keep the room moist and some hot water so I can make a drink for my throat before I go on, but that's really about it."

And, although I hardly need to ask, Craig confirms that he isn't given to having big 'I'm a celebrity' Prima Donna (or Prima Hombre - whatever the male equivalent is) moments.

"I think the only thing that I'll really kick up about is if I'm unhappy with something musically - nothing like a drama about 'Oh, I need there to be petals on my floor,' or 'I need there to be caviar.' I just think that if musically something's gone wrong, I will definitely pick up the person and say, 'You know what, we need to deal with this, because you can walk away from this but this is my career'."

As the hordes of screaming fans (some of whom have been queuing for four hours) prove, this 22-year-old is one of the most successful young British musicians around.

He describes his proudest moment as: "Standing outside Wembley Arena and seeing three nights sold out was pretty cool - that was an amazing moment."

But, of course, Craig wasn't born an international star - he's had his share of hard times and bad jobs just like the rest of us.

"My first job was - wow - it was telecanvassing," he reminisces.

"I kind of used it to phone my friends because the pay was so dismal that I thought, 'You know what, I'm going to absolutely rinse your phone bill to the maximum'. I didn't get caught but a friend of mine did, which was pretty funny. He was talking on the phone and the supervisor came over and said, 'Let me take over from the lead that you're trying to get,' and the guy on the other end of the line was saying, 'So what are you doing? Are you going out tonight?' That was quite funny."

As well as ensuring that Craig will never earn dismal wages again, his international fame has also seen him cash in on the romance front.

He has been linked to numerous gorgeous women, including the South American model Sofia Vergara.

Despite rumours in the tabloids that he's in a relationship he says that he's not seeing anyone right now. But what does he look for in a woman?

"Beautiful, sexy, ambitious, passionate and down to earth," he summarises.

Craig has his theories about why the tabloids are so obsessed with his personal life. "I think it's 'cause I kind of keep my personal life personal - so people are intrigued about who I'm with and what I do," he says.

"It doesn't really bother me. If I'm dating someone, I won't be, 'Oh, we've got to keep ourselves confined to the bedroom'... or maybe another part of the house," he says, laughing at his Freudian slip.

"I'm really open, doing my thing, but I don't necessarily go to all the celebrity bashes and all that stuff for people to be like, 'Oh right, there's the girl that Craig's with'. I just go to places that I think are a bit more discreet for both of us."

But if Craig is tight-lipped about his current romantic situation he's less guarded about his past loves.

"I remember my first crush," he says. "It was this girl at my middle school and she had some sort of make-over. She went and got her hair permed and the next thing I was just like, 'Who are you?'. It was amazing because one moment she was this girl that you wouldn't even look twice at and the next thing she kind of made herself up."

Another story about Craig that has been clocking up tabloid inches recently is that, after years of living in hotels, he's buying a luxury penthouse in London.

"I'm coming very close to finding the one," he says about his search for a flat.

"The papers have been quite good to find the place I was looking at - I was quite surprised that within moments of me seeing it, they were like, 'This is the pad that Craig's bought', but it probably will be."

And it's probably for the best, given that his current hotel apartment recently brought him to tears.

"I last cried a couple of weeks back when I was walking out of my bathroom and I smashed my little toe into the marble flooring - that kind of brought a little tear to my eye," he confesses, "and I thought I'd let it out rather than hold it back 'cause no one else was around."