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At this piont we were down to five contestants: Gareth, Will, Hayley, Darius and Zoe. And something unbelievable occured to me - Darius might win the competition! If you had said this to me nine months earlier it would have been insane. After Popstars Darius was a nations joke; now he had a chance of winning the UK's biggest-ever tallent competition. But he was singing well, he was charming, he had momentum. And the truth is, I wouldn't have minded.

Darius Dinesh

Darius was more prepared for Pop Idol than anybody else. He was the one who thought through his role on the show more than anyone else. And out of all the people on the show, he is, by far, the mosat charismatic. If I had to choose to go out to dinner or drinks with any of the Top 10, he would be No. 1 on my list. This guy could turn on the charm, and when he met my mum at the final, she started acting like a 20-year-old. When he met my friends, they were in awe. I felt he was like a polition, so immaculate in his preparation that it came across like sontaneity. He became the real dark horse to win the competition. While everyone was talking about Will and Gareth, Darius was picking up vote after vote each week. He had the whole of Scotland voting for him. I was absolutely thrilled that later on he got what he always wanted, a No. 1 record and a platinum album. To me, he is what Pop Idol stands for, which is that no matter how bad things are, if you've got the guts and you've got the deterination, you can fulfil your dreams. He wasn't the best singer by all means. Korben was a better singer than Dariusand so was Aaron. But Darius has the X Factor. I think the fact that Darius was in out competition last year was one of the reasons the show did so well. He was great

After almost two months of live shows, we were down to the final three: Will, Gareth and Darius. Looking back, I think Darius was resigned to leaving the show that night. Although Darius performed really well, he was voted out. I had very mixed feelings. While I was sad to see him go, I was also happy that he had done enough to achieve his dream,. Darius was the comeback kid, from nothing - worse than nothing, if you count his abysmal Popstars audition. He had come in third out of 15,000 contestants. Once a national joke, he was now a thoroughly likeable bloke, a talented singer with a great personality. Afterwards, he thanked me for everything I'd done for him, and we parted on really, really good terms.

The third success story, of course, was Darius. I met him about two weeks after the final to discuss signing him to my label. He came over to my house and he was very charming, and while we both went through motions of sayingwhat we felt we should, neither of us had any passion about it at all. Evenually, he was brave enough to articulate what we were both thinking. 'The problem I have Simon,' he said, 'is that I know I will always be third best to Will and Gareth.' I made a feeble attempt to deny that, but, of course, he was right. Still, I gave him one excellent piece of career advice. I told him that what we should have made was a classic covers album, because when he sang a Tom Jones song during the live shows it was one of the highlights of Pop Idol. That advice didn't go down very well with him - he looked upon it as a strategy for making a quick buck. Darius wanted to write his own material, and that's exactly what he has done. He has had a No. 1 single and a platinum album. I'm proud of him and I respect his ambition, but let me be clear - no matter how well Darius has done on his own material, I would have sold more records my way, without a doubt.

The Best Pop Idol Performances

3. Darius Dinesh, 'It's Not Unusual'

This was one of the cheesiest performances of the chessiest songs of all time, and it was absolutally brilliant as a result. Darius wasn't taking himself too seriously, he had a lot of fun with it and suddenly he had what Tom Jones had - the ability to appeal to both kids and older people. This was the point at which the audience at home really forgave Darius for everything in the past - including his performance on Ppstars. Great bloke, great personality and I just wish he had put that song out as a single, because, without doubt, it would have a massive hit. I loved it.

The Worst Pop Idol Performances

2. Darius Dinesh, 'Let's Face The Mudic And Dance'

Just awful. He sounded like some ghastly singer in a hotel lobby. If I had had a tomato in my pocket I would have thrown it at him - it was that bad. And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, he turned to th camera and gave a little wink. Horrible, horrible, horrible. This is the song that caused a huge row between Pete Waterman and myself. When I told Darius how much I hated his performance, Pete when mad, screaming at me and telling me I didn't know what I was talking about.