I don’t know if you’re going to be strong enough to deal with the monster that the industry can be,” The X Factor mentor Nicole Scherzinger told her 24-year-old charge James Arthur in 2012. It did seem unlikely. Throughout that ninth series, Arthur was the saddest man you’ve ever seen. He didn’t want to go back to the bedsit he couldn’t afford, he just wanted to perform raspy but technically pristine pop-rock versions of anything from Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” to LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” to live and televised audiences. Even when he won the show, and was piled on by his fellow contestants to joyfully celebrate with him, only the tiniest of smiles escaped.
But the morose, shy singer did have the strength to endure more than Scherzinger and viewers expected – specifically the many controversies in which he embroiled himself. When I meet the 37-year-old at a hotel restaurant in Soho, he approaches in a trucker hat and huge jacket that cocoon and enlarge him, making him seem taller than his 6ft 3in. Once he's seated, Arthur’s cornflower blue doll’s eyes rarely make comfortable contact with mine. “I’m a very, very sensitive person I think. But I was tough. I am tough. I’m resilient, I think is the word for me,” the “Say You Won’t Let Go” singer tells me.
