CityLife

By gum! Mika goes into Orbit

MOPPY of hair, foppy of demeanour, but never sloppy of songmanship: Mika is set to inherit the earth. Like all the best pop stars, the 22-year-old singer-songwriter seems to have been inoculated at birth against being conventional.

Take this weekend, for instance. "I was doing Manumission in Ibiza, and went onstage at 5am in the morning. It went amazingly well. Watching people dance to my music is probably one the best moments of the past year," he beams, flashing a Colgate-white smile.

Tragedy struck, however, "when I accidentally smashed one of the cables." Quelle horreur! "I didn't know what to do so I (wait for it) ended up singing I Would Walk 5,000 Miles by The Proclaimers. The crowd went mental."

His idea of getting back at someone, meanwhile, isn't to pen then a sternly-worded letter (with frowny faces drawn in the 'O's', naturally), but rather to sculpt a "sod you" song, entitled Grace Kelly.

"Revenge is good, isn't it?," he grins. Reminiscent of Prince's funk, it's aimed squarely at the record companies he'd previously worked with who wanted to bludgeon him into a Stepford poppet. Sample lyric? 'Should I be dirty/ Should I be flirty?... Just to be put on the shelf?'

Poppy

"They were saying, 'Why can't you be more like Craig David?'," he sighs. "They wanted me to sing really poppy songs on top of fake English Timbaland rip-off backing tracks."

He told them where to go and his self-belief paid off, ending up with him signed by music kingpin Tommy Mottola (one word: Mariah) in the US, and Universal in the UK.

Mika's life has, equally, been predictably unpredictable. Born in Beirut in the Eighties, he spent his formative years in Paris when his family was forced to flee Lebanon's civil war. Further turmoil was to descend, when his father was held hostage in Kuwait's American embassy in 1993.

"That was horrible," reflects Mika. "You know what the worst thing is? Every day, we control our lives so closely and we're responsible for every decision from whether to have a latte or cappuccino, to what kind of bed we sleep on."

"In war, the self-control and decision making and self-protection disappears and your life is completely in the hands of someone else. And that's a demoralising experience to go through, where real life is thrown aside."

When Mika was nine, his family pitched up in London. "I feel it's my home now. But having moved around, I don't have those landmarks people tend to. I don't have that big tree where I lost my virginity. I can't go: 'Oh look at that church where we buried my gran'.''

Classmates

He was bullied at the killing fields of school - both by classmates and teachers - so relentlessly that "I completely shut down. I forgot how to read and write. And ended up having to be pulled out."

Mamma Mika guided him towards music. "When I was a child, I was forced to practise to the point of tears. It was really tough. Especially in classical music.

"I'm really dyslexic. I don't know how to read music and I can't spell. So it was just to get me on my feet. She knew I had to work hard at something. And as it couldn't be academic. And it couldn't be books. What else was I going to do apart from draw or do music?"

Fortunately, he resisted the lure of the Spirograph and started to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Beethoven (the composer, as opposed to the loveable talking dog) and, er, Victoria Wood by teaching himself the piano. His first gig was at coltish 11, at the Royal Opera House, which certainly beats The Roadhouse in the prestige stakes.

Gruelling

By the time he was 15, Mika already had a gruelling schedule. "I did an Orbit chewing gum advert. All I remember was going in and repeating (sings) 'Orbit chewing gum. And it's good for your teeth, too!' 400 times, so I got every inflection right."

I did British Airwaves in-flight music. I was a right little whore. The problem was, I never really got paid for any of it. I got é45 for that advert, so I never actually had anything in my Junior Barclays Account"

Still, it was all "valuable experience", meaning that Mika can now perform the kind of dynamic vocal gymnastics that would make Paris Hilton give up and go home (which is reason enough to love him).

Having abandoned a Ryvita-dry academic LSE degree after just one day, he enrolled in The Royal College of Music, using his student loan to record demos in Miami.

His forthcoming album, Life In Cartoon Motion, fizzes like space dust, throwing the likes of Queen, Scissor Sisters and Nilsson into a party-popper and pulling the string.

Karaoke

"My aim is that no one else can sing the records that I make. You can't do my songs at karaoke," he explains. "I love records that sound big. I'm a solo artist. I can do things that most bands could never do because I don't have to compromise."

With his sister responsible for his artwork and illustration ("all of my family are going to end up in the arts or design - we'll be a Mafia to contend with in the next few years"), Mika's aiming high. "With the touring, I really want a troupe with me. I want my jugglers and I want women dressed up in Elizabethan costumes handing out free drink," he adds, eyes (the kind that could have been gorged directly from a puppy) widening.

And with that, he's off to perform his second ever gig, at London haunt The Borderline. "Do I have a warm-up routine?" he laughs. "I always have to brush my teeth. Say a couple of prayers." A pause. "And in that moment of desperation, speed-dial the shrink."

Mika plays Academy 3 on Monday, November 20. é7. Call 0161 832 1111. Check out: www.myspace.com/mikamyspace or www.mikasounds.com.