Will Young Leaves on Friday 'Friday's Child' album

For years, Will Young's only audience was a few empty cars stood in a quiet Exeter parking lot where the 23-year-old student used to belt out his favourite songs.

It was a side to him that nobody had seen before - not his friends, his fellow students or his family. They'd seen Will sing on stage before in both school and university productions, but not in the way he did in that car park.

"I never got the opportunity to sing the sort of songs I really love to an audience. I did it in the car park on my own. My singing was always repressed and the first time I had the opportunity to show what I could do in public, was when I sang Light My Fire on Pop Idol," he reveals.

The Pop Idol judges were as taken aback as those closest to Will. Nobody could remember his initial audition for the series. He'd sung 'Don't Blame It On The Boogie' and he blames it on the dance moves. "They were rubbish," he admits. "But it's best to be underestimated."

There was no underestimating Will after his performance of Light My Fire. It was clear from that moment that he had an amazing voice. It has a unique quality and once heard, it's never forgotten. "You always put a little bit of Will into whatever you sing," remarked Waterman. And Nicki Chapman explained: "You can sing any song and appeal to any age."

Before the cameras discovered Will, he was your ordinary student. He dressed in scruffy jumpers, worried about his overdraft and worked in a London bar to make ends meet.

He had a degree in politics from Exeter University, but dreamed one day of making it as a singer. "I knew I wanted to sing, but I thought getting a degree would be good to keep the intellectual side of things going. It would mean I had options," he explains.

When he applied for Pop Idol, he was in the middle of a three year musical theatre course at The Arts Educational School in Chiswick, South London. "At university, I'd discovered a love of performing. I appeared in a number of shows and I did a bit of modelling - I wasn't very good at it though, I felt a bit uncomfortable and didn't quite know how to do the mean and moody bit," he laughs.

"I knew I wanted to be a singer and I decided to do a performing arts course because I thought it would give me confidence, which it did. I only did a term and it made such a difference."

Will had appeared on TV before. He won a competition on ITV's This Morning to be part of a boy band. Simon Cowell was one of the judges, but didn't remember Will when he saw him again on Pop Idol. "Nothing came of it, the band didn't happen," says Will.

It was Pop Idol that showed Will at his best and he got better every week. Viewers also saw that there was more to him than a soulful voice. He has a razor sharp wit, a winning smile and a natural charm, which friends say made him 'annoyingly popular' at University.

His family, who live in Hungerford, were amazed by his performances. "It was a real surprise. Will didn't even tell us he was applying to Pop Idol," said his twin brother Rupert. His mother Annabel, a housewife, saw him perform live for the first time when he was in the final 10 and it took his dad Robin, a business man, a few weeks before he had the courage to join her in the studio audience. "He was worried that I wouldn't do as well as he wanted me to," explains Will. He needn't have worried.

"I didn't think I had a chance of winning," says Will. "It was like, 'I'll give this a go and see what happens'. I was amazed when I kept getting through and it made me realise that singing is what I really want to do. By the end of Pop Idol, I was thinking 'I am so ready for this.'

"It wasn't that I wanted to be a 'pop idol' or 'pop star' because for me that conjures up images of big dark glasses and minders and that's not really what I'm about. I know this might sound a bit cheesy, but I just wanted to be a successful singer, singing the sort of music that I love."

But despite the fact that his double A sided single Anything Is Possible/Evergreen has already sold XXX copies, Will still doesn't feel that he's made his mark.

"At the moment, it's all off the back of a TV programme and I'm hoping that the public will still want me without that. When I've done a second single, put together a good album and earned great reviews, then I might sit back and feel accomplished," he explains.

He also plans to finish a film script he's been working on since June last year. "I am still trying to write it, but don't seem to have much time at the moment. When it all calms down a bit, I'm going to go back to it," he says.

And he'd like to write songs too. "I've always wanted to and recently, I wrote a song with Cathy Dennis which was a real privilege. She and Bert Bacharach are currently writing some songs for me, which I'm really excited about. Things are going brilliantly at the moment and I'm loving every minute of it."

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Will Young Leaves on Friday - Friday's Child