heat

He reckons he was rubbish to start with, none of the judges can remember him from the audiotions and he only made the final 50 by the skin of is teeth. So how come Will Young has now overtaken Gareth to become the favourite to win Pop Idol, notching up over 41 percent of the votes in his heat and, according to rumour, raking in a massive amount of votes every week? The peoplelove him, the judges can't find a bad word to say about him, and his odds-currently 8/11 to win-are shortening faster than a wooly top in a tumble-dryer.
        "I only managed to scrape into the last 50, but I knew I could do better," says the 22-year-old. He found out about Pop Idol from a friend while studying politics at Exeter University and only just beat the deadline application. At the time, the nearest Will had come to singing in public was practising in a multi-storey car park, where tramps would shout at him to put a sock in it. Now he's given up his degree and is focusing on not just winning the show but kick-starting his career in music.
        "Winning would be a dream but my ultimate goal is to get a record contract," he says. And the way the judges have been raving over him-even Simon Cowell has taken back his early negative comments-it would seem that goal is truely in sight already.
        Will is originally from Hungerford, Berkshire but now lives in London. He grew up idolising George Micheal and dreamt of becoming a soul star or working in musicals. He won a scholarship to theatre school specialising in musicals, but decided he didn't like it. "It's just not my type of music, it's very [projects loudly] 'Rah rah!' and I'm not very good at that."
        Three years ago Will put himself forward for a boyband competition on This Morning with Richard and Judy- and won. At the time he was working behind a bar in a smart restaurant in Oxford, where, according to his collegues, he was a demon cocktail maker.
        "I never knew he could sing," says one of his co-workers at that time. "But he was such a nice guy. No one could say a bad word about him. He was so chilled out, very cool. I'm not surprised they're so crazy for him on Pop Idol, he's such a genuine guy. I don't remember him being particularly wild, he's pretty straight down the line. And he's very funny, very quick. Everyone loved him."
        "I always wanted to sing but I wasn't really confident," he says now. "But every year I'd get a better role, and I got the lead at the end which is how it should be. It was just brilliant."
        Having worked through the early audition of Pop Idol almost unnoticed, Will had a nerve-racking wait to find out if he'd made the last 50.
        "During the auditions at the Criterion, we had to wait three and a half hours in a room for the judges' decision," says Will. I then spent 20 minutes in the 'maybe' room. It was awful. We were standing in there, not knowing what was happening and we could hear other people cheering. I was thinking, 'There's no way I'm through.' And then Simon came in and said, 'I'm really sorry to keep you waiting.' I just though 'you're evil!' I burst into tears afterwards.
        Will grabbed the public's attention in the next round when he had a prickly exchange with Simon Cowell. Simon called his performance 'average' and Will calmly told Simon that he didn't think he was average and said "It's that you've given an opinion on this show. In previous shows you've just projected insults.
        And although the other contestants were cheering him when he got back to the green room, he wondered whether he'd blown it by speaking his mind. But Will won his heat with nearly half the votes. "My family were all in tears when I won. They were as stunned as I was," he says.
        His family have only recently started to turn up at the studio on Saturday nights, fearing he might fail. "His success to date is astounding, given his lack of co-ordination and inability to stop himself falling into any kind of water," says mum Annabel.
        Will's nothing like your typical Pop Idol. His idea of a great weekend is country walks and sitting in pubs, he doesn't really go on dates, is blissfully single and he sometimes comes out with corny lines like: "I know it sounds cheesy, but singing gives me so much joy." Not only is Will brighter than your average popstar. he's also a really nice bloke.
        And that's something Amy and Jen, two girls from Leeds, can confirm. They were in a London taxi cab that reversed into Will's car recently. Even though his car was trashed, Will saw the girls were excited to see him so he chatted to them. "Will's a nice guy as well as a great singer," say two now very committed Will fans. "We definitely want him to win now."
        They're not the only ones.