Darius World

Darius was the nation’s favourite joke….but just look who’s laughing now

By Simon Scott
Daily Express 4 March 2003

Darius Danesh cracks a joke about a woman he’s rumoured to be engaged to and his big, booming laugh takes me by surprise. Can this really be the same Darius I met last year? Back then he was about to launch his first single and all he would talk about was his quest for credibility as a singer-songwriter, barely cracking a smile in the process. Today he can’t stop smiling.

Why this dramatic change? “I’m having a great time,” he says, flashing dazzling pearly whites. With a couple of hit singles and a well-received album under his belt, it seems the Pop Idol graduate has finally learned to relax. His supposed fiancée is 20 yr old Mirella Dell’Aquila, who fronts a Canadian band named Sugar Jones. She claims they met 6 months ago and have been an item ever since but according to Darius it was all a publicity stunt for their new single.

He did have his picture taken with the band but he says it was then cleverly cropped to show just him and Mirella. “She wasn’t even the pretty one in the group” he jokes, guffawing again “I was gutted”. Such joviality shows 22 year old Darius has lightened up a lot. There have been girlfriends but the Canadian wannabe popstar wasn’t one of them. Darius says “I’m supposed to have spent 10 days with her in November when actually I was on a relentless promotional tour for my album. Then I apparently flew her to Glasgow to meet my parents and proposed to her in a restaurant on Christmas Eve, which was rubbish”. He has also been linked to It-girl Venitia Hibbert but she’s an old friend and his current London flatmate. The women he has dated include a fashion student from Manchester, of whom he says, “There’s no point in naming her because she isn’t famous but she was a great girl. We had some nice times. There was also one girl I dated for about 4 months last year whose parents specifically asked me to keep her out of the public eye. I felt a bit of a fool when interviewers kept asking me if I was in a relationship and I had to say something like, ‘I don’t have the time to dedicate to a relationship that I’d like to’. In a way it was true although I was actually seeing someone.”

Now he is enjoying his bachelor life. When the first pay cheque came in from debut single Colourblind he blew it on a holiday to Mauritius with his 18-year-old brother, Aria. “We had a magic 2 weeks. Pina Coladas on the beach, water skiing, scuba diving…” He then waxes lyrical about descending 60ft to inspect a shipwreck, being surrounded by hundreds of tiny fish and running his hand along the underside of a 12ft moray eel. That’s Darius for you; he’s nothing if not enthusiastic When he was at school this enthusiasm put him on the wrong side of the bullies. He grew up in Glasgow, the son of a Persian father, Booth, and Scottish mother, Avril. In previous interviews he has talked about being bullied but has never gone into detail before. His guard is down today though, and he admits wasn’t because was mixed race, as has often been assumed, but because he was seen as a geek with a guitar. “I went to a school where you were either a swot or did sports. I studied but I was also sporty so I didn’t fit in. The other kids labelled me a geek because I took music as an extra subject and would spend lunch breaks writing songs. I was bullied for about 4 or 5 years verbally and physically. I would come home from school with a black eye and a bloody lip. I told my mum it was because of rugby. I wasn’t happy but I couldn’t tell them why. It was the music that got me through. That was my own little word I could escape to.” All this explains the thick skin that saw him take a battering on Pop Stars – where his rendition of Britney ‘s Baby One More Time made him a national joke. “I was confused and hurt by that,” he says. “It was the first programme of it’s kind and I didn’t realise my mistakes would be magnified, edited, scrutinised, and criticised. We all make mistakes, I made mine on national TV.” Surprisingly, he cropped his ponytailed locks, shaved off his goatee and went back for more on Pop Idol. Why? “I felt used by Pop Stars so I decided to use Pop Idol to my own advantage. I saw it as an opportunity to work with the best TV people, the best management, and the best PR team. I had an idea in my head but my friends and family said I was crazy. I didn’t see it like that. I believe that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” He’s reciting a cliché but he was proved right. Despite coming 3rd in the long run Darius could well turn into the winner of Pop Idol. Fending off offers of a record contract from P Waterman & S Cowell, Darius signed to Mercury and bided his time before releasing an album of bracingly upbeat pop songs, most of them co-written by himself. Even hard bitten journalists gave him the thumbs up, which makes the recent vitriol from Waterman seem all the more churlish. In a documentary on BBC Scotland, Waterman ranted, “ He made himself a laughing stock to become famous. Do not feel sorry for Darius. Darius, you ain’t Bob Dylan”. Darius won’t be drawn into a slanging match. Choosing his words carefully he says “Pete Waterman is a man I admire and respect and he’s the guy who championed me on Pop Idol, so people think it’s odd he is saying all those things now. A lot of things happened after Pop Idol that the public don’t know about. The stuff that was shown on TV was great entertainment but other things went on behind the scenes.”

Comments like Waterman’s are water off Darius’s broad back these days. He has had his fair share of verbal knocks since singing Britney and not all the knocks came from the panel of judges. “When I went out people would shout abuse but I guess I deserved it. I was the guy who went on TV and said it was my dream to have a No1 single and a platinum album by the time I was 35. I was a young, naïve, insecure, cocky kid. Now when people come up it’s always complimentary, which I don’t really know how to take. For so long I was kicked so now it’s almost like I feel I don’t really deserve it.” Darius has been helped through the worst of the times with the support of his parents and two younger brothers. He also admits to using the healing power of prayer. He describes himself as a “Christian enlightened by the teachings of Islam”. But he insists he is no poster boy for clean living. He has a sex life and he likes a good drink. The other day he was in Amsterdam and enjoyed a night on the town with the rock band Counting Crows. They got through 3 crates of beer, and then polished off some champagne in the hotel room. “The next day I did 3 interviews, 2 photo shoots and a gig and I was still drunk,” he reveals with a cheeky grin. Darius does draw the line at drugs, however “Kids at school were smoking and taking drugs from the age of 14 but I never wanted to be involved in that. My parents were doctors and they would tell me stories about treating kids who had overdosed or had to have their stomachs pumped.”

If he needed any proof that they public is firmly on his side, he only had to listen out to the cheers that greeted his Tom Jones impersonation on last years Pop Idol tour, or dodge the knickers hurled on stage by enthusiastic female fans. The knickers will be flying again when Darius headlines his own tour in May. Tucking into a health chicken salad, he says “ I want to get into shape before I go on the road. I’ve slimmed down a bit but now I want to get fit.”

Tanned and trim, Darius is looking good. He’s feeling good too, and is visibly excited about singing on stage again. He’s unlikely to be singing It’s Not Unusual but he might wear his kilt. “It depends on how small the stage is”, he says, flashing the sort of cheeky grin that has made him both a pop star and housewives choice. “I don’t want to give people at the front of the crowd to much of an eyeful. After all, I am a true Scot!”