Jamie's journey into the fame game (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Jamie's journey into the fame game

YOUNG jazz supremo Jamie Cullum reveals the highs and lows of his year-long rise to stardom in a special edition of the South Bank Show on Sunday week.

A mixture of home videos, interviews with presenter Melvyn Bragg, and live concerts, the programme gives a revealing insight into how the 24-year-old has coped with being in the media spotlight since his £1 million deal with Universal last year.

Jamie, who was brought up in Hullavington and attended Grittleton House School and Sheldon School, Chippenham, was more used to playing small venues, weddings and clubs before news of his record-breaking deal for a jazz musician broke in the national press.

The programme begins with a home video of Jamie on April 24 last year as he talks about being photographed at Universal's offices in London celebrating the deal.

"It has been the weirdest day of my life so far," he said as he describes squirting champagne, being interviewed for radio and recording the Michael Parkinson show.

More home video footage reveals his nerves before he appears on Parkinson. "Good nerves," he says. On being congratulated on his performance after the show he says: "Can I do it again?"

Jamie reveals how he began playing music live when he was 16 and became increasingly frustrated that he couldn't concentrate on his music, while studying for his A-levels.

He decided to take a year out before university and with £480 and some help from his parents he recorded his own album.

He paid tribute to the influence of his brother Ben who, as he grew up, introduced him to everything from Jimi Hendrix to Led Zeppelin and all the pop music around at the time.

Jamie says: "If there is one influence it is probably the amount of music I have listened to rather than any one thing."

He adds: "The main way really I learned, was trying to play to records and trying to work everything out."

He paid for his studies playing jazz and said it got to the stage where he had to turn down gigs and even played the night before his university final exams.

It was then he began to feel his future was in music.

In an amazingly quick turnaround, just a year later, Jamie was working with top producer Stewart Levine, a veteran of sessions with Simply Red and BB King, on Twentysomething, his first album after the £1 million deal.

It is behind the piano and a mike on stage that Jamie seems to be most confident and happy.

Performances of I Could Have Danced all Night, I Get a Kick Out You and High and Dry see Jamie drumming on the piano, and nodding his head, eyes closed, in a musical world of his own.

He reveals his dislike of the media in another video diary piece, as he is about to sign the deal on August 9, 2003, months after it had been reported in the press.

He says: "PR and all that press stuff, I am only starting to realise how much of it is lies."

The touring schedule and constant demands from the media also takes its toll.

He says: "I have been feeling depressed a bit really in the last week.

"When I had an afternoon free, I thought I had an afternoon free, I sat in my hotel room, I got my guitar out, I got my notebook out and I had a couple of ideas for songs and then my manager Marc called me up and said I had four interviews to do and it would take the next three hours.

"I felt like bursting into tears. I had all these ideas in my head. It was really frustrating."

He also gives award ceremonies the thumbs down after he was presented with the BBC Radio 2 rising jazz star award.

After receiving his trophy he says: "I am going to be honest. I really did not enjoy tonight."

He adds: "I felt like a fake really .I know I am not the best out there. I have just had a great opportunity."

But the tide of success sweeps Jamie on. The cameras follow him on his trips to the States to play at the prestigious Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York in October.

Jamie takes some time with his band to see famous old New York jazz venues such as the Cotton Club, the Apollo Theatre and Minton's Playhouse.

On his return from New York his album is released and quickly goes platinum notching up sales of 300,000.

He says: "The record has done brilliantly well. First it went gold then it went platinum. It really means it has gone into the stratosphere in terms of a debut recording."

But Jamie reveals his sense of insecurity about whether it is the music or marketing that is reason for the album's success.

He says "Although it's amazing, I know that is what the record company planned, and I know they spent so much money and I really try and put it down to the album's good, but part of me still thinks in the back of my mind I haven't really been off the television so they have had no chance but to buy it."

l The South Bank Show special featuring Jamie Cullum will be shown on ITV on February 22 at 11.05pm.