Exclusive! Mika

Part one of our sit-down with the man we j’adore the most…

First up, why are you wearing three watches at the same time?
Why not? Actually, it’s because I’m dyslexic. It takes most people about three seconds to tell the time by a watch, it takes me about 20. I can only read digital watches: that’s a dyslexic thing. But the watches look good. They’re nicer than most jewellery, aren’t they?

So did you, in your wildest dreams, ever think it would go crazy like this?
Not like this.

It’s like you’ve put a spell on the whole world and can’t put a foot wrong…
That’s bollocks. People who do want to support me do support me and the people who don’t, they make a fuck load of noise too. That’s a healthy sign. When you get polar reactions that are that extreme, it’s the first indicator of a career.

How does it feel to see all these random pictures in the magazines of you getting out of a car…?
Or reading about some argument that I’m apparently having with Simon Cowell, which is complete nonsense. That was in Heat: a double-page spread. Some photo of me at HMV in Los Angeles and a headline on the other side saying The Showbiz Feud: Mika versus Simon Cowell. I was 16 when I met him and ‘Grace Kelly’ certainly wasn’t written about him. That’s what they’ve been saying. I suppose some of it is fun; everyone knows how disposable it is.

When people want to be famous, they probably think they’re going to like the feeling of having people saying hello to them in the street…
But a lot of people don’t say hello to you in the street, they just look at you like this [does a face like someone looking at a circus freak]. Or they just treat you like shit because they want to be cool. I’ve done nothing but wear three watches on my arm and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, what a twat!’

Is it hurtful?
You just cut it off. The good thing is I’m very tall so people don’t recognise me. I’m a little bit freakish when it comes to my height. But after a gig, if people want to talk to you, I don’t mind so I go and walk out. After I gig I think I might as well go out and talk to these people either what’s the point of doing this job? You’re almost absconding yourself. It’s pathetic. But I did get mobbed in Paris. Security had to surround me. It was weird. Very alien to me.

And yet there haven’t been all those tabloid stories…
It wasn’t what I’m about. I didn’t get to where I got in the charts through getting attention in the tabloids. It didn’t come from who I was sleeping with or how many times I got wasted in a week. All of it came from the music and from the internet and going out gigging for 20 people in a club…

Have any bad stories come out, ’cause they’re obsessed with the ‘is he or isn’t he gay’ question, aren’t they?
How can somebody saying I may be gay be a bad thing? I don’t care about that.

The question is following you around a bit now, isn’t it?
It always has really, hasn’t it?

Aren’t you worried you’re putting a premium on someone coming forward with a story about how you shagged them?
But I don’t care about that. I care about me. I care about the choices I make for myself. How can you think about things like that? If I started thinking like that then I’d already be thinking I’m screwed up. I have so many other more interesting things to think about.

The single ‘Big Girl’ is out now, as is the album Life In Cartoon Motion. Read the second part of this interview tomorrow!