| How disabling is his stammer? Obviously it hasn't stopped him having a career, and at school it didn't stop him doing well in exams (he got eight As at GCSE though he had to sing his German oral), but socially it is a real downer. Even in a one-to-one meeting like ours, it is quite painful waiting for the words to emerge, but it must be impossible at a party where there are lots of people talking at once. He says the worst thing, as a teenager in Bradford, was 'When I tried to chat to girls and nothing came out. But it's easier for me now - being famous helps with that.' And, he goes on, 'Before all this happened, I always used to see my stammer as being a negative, all my life, but then when I went on Pop Idol and the first time I saw it on television, it was really, really bad, but also it made me stand out, it made people remember me. So for the first time in my life, it worked to my advantage.' Let's take a quick whirl through his life story - all 18 years of it. Born in Bradford 1984, the eldest child of Paul and Wendy Gates - his mother was only 18, his father 22, and they didn't get round to marrying till a couple of years later. Dad an engineer, later a postman; Mum a housewife and foster carer. Three younger sisters and a cousin, James, who grew up with them; also a shifting cast of foster children. Gareth went on stage at the Alhambra, Bradford, aged five, to play the smallest of the king's sons in The King and I and was so delighted when he got a laugh that 'I knew from then that I wanted to perform.' But it wasn't till he was eight that he was found to have a voice. He auditioned for a school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat , thinking he might play one of the brothers, and the teacher asked him to sing 'Any Dream Will Do'. 'I opened my mouth to sing and everyone was stunned.' He claims it was not only the first time he'd sung in public but the first time he'd sung at all - even his mother didn't know he could sing. When he was nine, he auditioned for Bradford Cathedral choir, and was accepted. He became head chorister at 11, and sang in front of the Queen when she came for the Maundy service in 1997. However, he left when his voice broke at 14, and threw all his energies into his 'real' church, the Abundant Life Centre in Bradford. It sounds an extraordinary place - a happy-clappy congregation of more than 1,500 with gospel choirs and a pop band called the Worship Team. It was where he spent most of his teens. His parents joined the church when he was four or five and at first he just went because they did, 'But then at the age of 13, I felt it was up to me to decide whether I wanted to go to church or be with my mates, and I chose to go to church.' He says he has looked in vain for a similar church in London - at present he goes back to Bradford on Sundays whenever he can. In his book, Gareth is keen to portray himself as a normal lad, doing normal lad-type things with his mates. But actually it's quite clear that he was extraordinarily driven from a very young age. He recounts a typical day in his teens as school from 8.30 to 3.30 followed by guitar lesson, tea, then to the Abundant Life Centre for youth band rehearsal, followed by main band rehearsal, home maybe at 11, then homework and bed. Sundays were taken up with church services; Saturdays he was often booked to sing at weddings. In addition, he and his sister Nicola entered every local talent competition, often winning them. He sang 'Pie Jesu' on Yorkshire TV, he went on Talent for Tomorrow, and on Michael Barrymore's My Kind of People and Steps to the Stars, so he was already quite a star around Bradford by the time he entered Pop Idol. The first Pop Idol audition was in Manchester, and he and Nicola sang a duet in the queue - Nicola was eliminated, but he got through to the next round in London where 100 contestants were whittled down to 50, and then 10. This was decision time, when he had to give up his school, his A levels, his place at the Royal Northern College of Music (to train as an opera singer), and move to London. Those nine weeks doing Pop Idol, when the 10 were whittled down to two, were good fun, he says; they all lived in Home House Hotel and partied every night, but he cried when his best friend Zoe Birkett was eliminated. Finally, it was down to him and Will Young, and Will won. But that was fine, he says, because he and Will had already both been signed by Simon Fuller at 19 Management and told that, whoever won, they would both have a career 'which made it a bit more enjoyable on the night'. Since then, he has hardly had a free day - he was in a studio recording his first single, 'Unchained Melody', the day after Pop Idol finished, and on a plane to Florida to shoot the video the day after. He keeps saying in his book, and to me, that he is 'living his dream' but his dream sounds like nightmarish hard work. He lives alone in a rented flat in west London, shops and cooks for himself - he is quite good at pasta, he says. It must be lonely coming home to an empty flat, but he says he doesn't mind: 'I like to have quiet evenings and relax.' He phones his mum every day. He has no close friends in London - he is friendly with some of the Pop Idol people but they are all too busy to meet often. The other day he was nominated for a Luvvies 'Opening of an Envelope' award for people who show up at every celebrity party, but he says he hates celebrity parties - 'It's all false. Lots of people who are only there to try and get a story on you.' He has learnt to be wary of the press, since a News of the World story last October that he had had an affair with the tabloid model Jordan. 'I took Gareth's virginity,' she claimed, saying that she got a friend to introduce them while Pop Idol was still going on, and they had '15 steamy trysts' before splitting up in May. What is slightly wrong with this scenario is that she would have been heavily pregnant at the time - she gave birth to a son in June. In any case, Gareth says he met her precisely once, at the Elle Style Awards in September, and nothing steamy transpired. So did she just make it all up? 'That's right. I don't know why. And [he writes] I wouldn't like to speculate.' |