In April, Will Young ran the London Marathon for the second time. He hadn't done as much training as the year before, but he'd given up smoking, so he thought the two would balance out. It didn't quite work out that way. The first half of the race was relatively pleasant but after 17 miles he had a dramatic collision with the famous "wall". "I sat down in a tunnel next to someone's piss and thought, 'I could just rest my head, but if I do that, I don't think I'll ever wake up,'" he recalls. "So I had to get up again. It was absolute hell. It goes from being a lovely jog to Armageddon."
That roadside spectators recognised the 33-year-old singer didn't exactly help. Neither did the fact that he was raising money for the Catch22 youth charity. "Someone shouted out, 'Do it for the young people!'" says Young. "I was thinking, 'Fuck the young people! I don't give a shit.' People kept saying, 'Keep going!' Fuck off, you're not in my shoes. No more Mr Nice Guy."
Eventually, he reached the Mall after four and a half hours on his feet and a strange thing happened. He saw a television camera, one that followed runners in a tracking shot along the finishing straight. After hobbling along for miles, suddenly Young found fresh reserves of energy. "I clicked into Linford Christie mode. I did this immense sprint to the finish line purely because the camera was on me. I could still turn it on after 20-however-many miles and I did."
It's true. Young has always exuded a preternatural confidence on screen – often when experienced observers have suggested he has little right to. He was launched to fame after becoming the inaugural Pop Idol winner in 2002, a competition that he never looked like winning until he did. Ten years on, sitting in a private room at the Soho House members club in central London, he reveals that this victory was built on an unswerving belief that it was his destiny.
From the age of four, Young insists, he had imagined becoming a famous singer. While other kids would kick a football around, Young and his friend Adam Campbell, who's now an actor, would take turns interviewing each other in the style of Michael Parkinson.
This attitude also explains why, as countless talent-show stars have had their quarter-hour of fame and disappeared, Young is still with us a decade later. He is not just hanging on either; he's officially part of the pop firmament now. He has sold more than 9 million records and his latest album, Echoes, released last August, went straight in at No 1. Its fourth single, I Just Want a Lover, comes out next month. A national tour started on Friday and continues until 12 July, but good luck getting a ticket. He has appeared in films, TV and theatre and in September he makes his debut in musical theatre, a much-awaited turn as the MC in Rufus Norris's production of Cabaret.
Surely not even Young would have dreamed of such longevity? "I did!" he exclaims. "Where I'm at now is where I've always wanted to be. I knew when I won Pop Idol, I definitely had five years: that I wanted to do better music; I wanted to act as well; I wanted to do stuff that I really believed in. And Simon Fuller [the creator of the Idol franchise and still Young's manager] got it and always did really. He always thought long term and I always thought long term. I've never done ambulance chasing. I still make decisions based on wanting to be around for the next 10 years."
Such self-belief could make Young sound slightly monstrous, but it has always been paired with an appealing vulnerability. Shortly after winning Pop Idol, he came out in public (he had been openly gay since he was at university). There was more scrutiny when it emerged his twin, Rupert, had attempted suicide when they were 20 and both brothers had undergone treatment for depression. Even today, Young seems assured when talking about his career, but hesitant when discussing extracurricular matters.
"That's why Pop Idol was so mental," says Young. "I was 22. I don't even think I was comfortable with my sexuality at that stage, yet I could pick up a microphone for the first time and tell the judges what I thought. Ten years ago, I couldn't even go to a nightclub, I was such a shy person. I've always had quite low self-esteem and I think that's why singing and songwriting and performing have been such outlets because I could always express who I really wanted to be."
There is an idea that success has come easily to Young and he doesn't disagree. His prep school was a feeder school for Eton and Winchester, but he ended up going to Wellington College, near the family home in Berkshire. He disliked boarding school and says now that he would never send his children to one. "But it's not like, 'Poor me, I got sent to boarding school. I got given a Golf when I was 17. My life's been so awful.' It hasn't. My life's been brilliant."
Young studied politics at Exeter University and has little idea how he would have fulfilled his destiny if Pop Idol had not come along. "I didn't play an instrument, I didn't write songs," he says. "And 'middle class', 'politics' and 'gay' weren't exactly buzzwords for a pop star." After university, a term studying musical theatre at the Arts Educational school in Chiswick, west London, gave him the confidence to apply for the new show; it was a three-year course but he would never need to go back.
"I knew that I needed to get in front of people, not judges or music executives," says Young. "I just thought I'd be in with a chance if I could bypass that whole system. And that's what is great about music now – it's not about radio play or who gets on TV. People can bypass all that crap and see singers straight on YouTube."
After two No 1 albums (From Now On and Friday's Child), Young's popularity looked like it was starting to wane. A low point came in 2009 when Let it Go, the title track of his fourth album, entered the singles chart at 58. His career seemed destined to follow those of other Pop Idol alumni, Gareth Gates and Darius Danesh.
"I had a real dip and I became a bit disillusioned. I started to think, 'What's the point?'" he admits. "I was being confronted by the business side of things – Is it going to work? Is it going to hit the market? – and that can really take away your passion."
Around this time, he also started therapy. You might imagine that Young was struggling to adjust to his overnight fame or failing to accept the ephemeral nature of pop stardom. In fact, he was entirely comfortable with these aspects of his life, it was just everything else that was unravelling.
"I sorted out shit from work very quickly," he says. "People who go on, 'It's just so hard being famous…' Give it a rest! Being famous is the best. You get free things and a really good wage and people quite often say quite nice things to me and that's really nice. No one likes a whingeing famous person.
"I've had loads of therapy: I've done residential, I've done courses. It's been amazing," he continues. "Along with my job, it's changed my life. How many times do you say, 'I'm fine' when you're thinking, 'I'm actually not fine, I'm actually feeling really fucking sad today or really angry'? I think it's really important to own it and be honest about it and say, 'Sometimes I feel really shit about myself but not the whole time and this is what you can do to get better.' I'm a massive advocate of talk, talk, talk."
Young credits therapy with improving his music, too. "I bring no baggage into work like I used to," he says. He believes he is more assured in his opinions and more creative. For the new live shows – venues include Kew Gardens and forests around Britain – he is threatening to dress up with his band as Robin Hood and his Merry Men or a troupe of morris dancers, though his record company is less enthusiastic about those ideas.
One part of Young's life is still a work in progress: relationships. "Not looking, no. The shop's not open," he says. "In five years, I'll be happy to get married and have kids, but I'm not ready now. I'm quite independent. I want to be with someone because I like their company. I don't want to be with someone because I'm rattling around at home and no one wants to come to the pub. But I can see it, I can imagine it, I've got it in my head. I will bake the cakes and pick up the kids, then I might do an album."
Before the kids and cakes, though, there's the small matter of Cabaret. After his term studying musical theatre at Arts Ed, is this a return to his first love? "Actually, I've never really liked musicals," he admits. "I don't really like Rodgers and Hammerstein, but Cabaret's a great musical and the MC is such an amazing character: he's strong, he's dirty, he's vulnerable, he's persecuted. I won't have any restrictions to play this part and I want to bring whatever is going on that day to the stage."
He's sung for royalty, he's acted opposite Judi Dench, he's been on Parky for real – it's hard to think what could be left to achieve for Will Young. He thinks for a moment and smiles. "Some kind of contemporary dance? I'd be a triple threat: music, acting and dance. There I am!"
