| With heavy heart, I told him I was going to have to ask a personal question which of course he didn't have to answer - is he still a virgin? He answered easily, without any stammer at all: 'I'd rather not answer that.' Phew, thank God, I can't really face discussing an 18-year-old's sex life. We established the bare parameters - he is 'not interested' in one-night stands, he would only sleep with a girl if he felt something for her, on the other hand he is not so extremely Christian that he is saving it for marriage. He says he has not yet had a serious relationship, though there were two - one in Bradford, one in London - that looked as though they might get serious, then didn't. Lately he has been seen with 27-year-old dancer Suzanne Mole, but he says they are just good friends. He told me at one point that 'I really can't wait to have a family, a big family and a big house in the country.' But then, as if correcting himself, he added, 'but obviously I wouldn't want it yet.' There have been rumours that his management made him sign an agreement that he wouldn't have a girlfriend for five years - he says that's rubbish, but he probably understands that a publicly ack- nowledged girlfriend would be bad for his career. After Pop Idol, there was a great hoo-ha when the winner, Will Young, came out as gay, but Gareth says it came as no surprise to him. Did he know any gays before Will, back in Bradford? Oh no, he says, there weren't any gays in Bradford. 'To move from Bradford where there are no gays to London where it's like - whoa! But that's cool.' Do gays fancy him? 'Yeah. I performed at a thing called GAY at the Astoria club, and that was crazy. When I walked on stage I went agh, because I'm used to an audience of little girls screaming, crying, fainting, being crushed - and it was exactly the same, but with big men, crying and all! At first I was very nervous, but then I relaxed and thought: "Well, I'm here to perform, go for it" - so I started blowing them kisses!' Before I met Gareth Gates, I had cynically imagined that he was in about the 14th minute of his 15 minutes of fame and would shortly disappear into the black hole of 'Where are they now?' But having met him, I'm not so sure. He is quite astonishingly ambitious - he thinks the world has barely seen a fraction of his talent, that it's all still to come, and that we are currently only at base camp in the foothills of his career. His target for this year is to conquer Europe - he has dates in Amsterdam, Germany, Spain, France - and then focus on America. 'My ultimate goal is to break America - I know that's very difficult but it's what I want to aim towards. I would love to have a house in the Hollywood Hills - I really like Los Angeles.' But gosh, Gareth, I tell him, even Robbie Williams hasn't managed to crack America. 'It is hard, yes. And I don't want to just go there and hang around. I want to be greeted with big, big, big' - and here he writes down a word and we both peer at it for a long time. The word is 'historia'. 'Like the Beatles,' he says. Oh hysteria, I exclaim. 'That's right, that's right. That's the level I want to break it, to have that hysteria.' Crikey. This is thinking big. And I sort of want to slap him for mentioning himself in the same breath as the Fab Four. He hasn't even written a decent song yet - we know he has a nice voice and a pretty face but he hasn't shown a glimmer of originality. On the other hand, he is working on his song-writing and seems to realise the scale of the mountain he has to climb - 'I'm really excited that people can get to know me and realise I'm not just a pretty face with a voice - that there's a talent there as well, you know.' Maybe, maybe. Worth a small punt on Celebdaq at least. |