WHILE Britney went bowling to mark her arrival in Scotland this week, her support act, JC Chasez, was holed up in the hotel bar in Glasgow city centre. It may explain why he appears a little sleepy. His eyes

are barely opening behind his low-slung Playboy baseball cap and he slouches, then sits up, then slouches, trying to resist waves of tiredness but not quite pulling it off.

Such is the exertion of promoting a debut solo album. Joshua Scott Chasez is one-fifth of *NSync and, like his good friend and bandmate Justin Timberlake before him, he's chasing a solo career. His album, Schizophrenic, has been praised even by reluctant critics (''Everybody wants to hate a boyband, let's be honest,'' acknowledges Chasez) for his assured vocal performance and bold ventures into R'n'B, New Wave, Latin and soul.

Safe to say, he's heard the word ''diverse'' one too many times. ''Yeah,'' he sighs. ''In my mind, I just wanted to make a cool record and a cool record to me is just a record

full of great songs. It doesn't matter what style they are. Whenever I was inspired, I went with it and I went with it all the way. I didn't care that one song didn't sound like another song. My favourite songs are not from the same genre, and that's how my brain works.''

While his music is undeniably diverse, it does appear lyrically unified. ''People think I'm sex-crazed,'' says the 27-year-old. He thinks it's a misinterpretation of some of the songs, specifically those titled All Day Long (I Think About Sex) and One Night Stand, plus the line ''when I'm all alone, I lie awake and masturbate''.

''Some of them are just jokes, some of them are just fun and some of them were just written when I was in the mood,'' he says. ''The song One Night Stand, that song is a total joke. It has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with comedy in my mind. All Day Long is about being obnoxious and loud. Even though there's sex in it, sex isn't the driving idea behind some of these things.''

Like Timberlake, Spears and Christina Aguilera, Chasez began his career at the Mouse Club (that's the alumni term for the Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club), where he says Timberlake was in with the older, cool crowd. Chasez was 13 years old when he joined and although the children's variety show wasn't known for pushing the boundaries of music, it exerted a huge influence on the way he approaches it.

''What's wild is I didn't start listening to music until I was a teenager,'' he says. ''I was kind of the black sheep because all these kids had dreams of doing music since they were five and my family just weren't musical. I was just kind of there because I got the job, so everybody thought it was their job to show me what good music was.

''I had one kid showing me a Tupac record and another kid showing me a Billy Joel record, so my CD collection from the beginning looked like a mish-mash. I'd have a Led Zeppelin record beside an MC Hammer record, which is probably blasphemy.''

The Mickey Mouse Club finished when he was 17, after which he joined a troupe that toured US

bases throughout Europe. When he returned to America, he planned to go to college, but kept writing material until one day he was reunited with Timberlake in Nashville, where they were working with the same voice coach. Timberlake invited him to his place in Memphis, where they spent a month writing and recording. It wasn't long before *NSync was formed, along with Chris Kirkpatrick, Lance Bass and Joey Fatone, and their debut album sold 10 million.

Since then, his relationship with Timberlake has survived some testing times, including Timberlake's break-up with Britney Spears. ''For a while, I was stuck in the middle because I'm friends with both of them,'' he says. ''I'm great friends with Justin and

she's a great girl. Things were strained because they weren't in a happy place. In some ways, they didn't handle it grown-up and in some ways they did. They would never talk about each other to me during that time, which I respected them for.''

He says that Timberlake and Spears are now friends again and were excited about the prospect of Chasez touring with Spears. ''Justin was excited about it for me; I was excited to go out in front of a new crowd; and she was excited because she thought I would add to the show. It's a win-win-win situation.''

As for the controversy generated by Spears's show, which involves a fair bit of not-quite nudity and suggestive dance routines, Chasez passionately defends her right to artistic expression. ''She's a sexy girl,'' he says. ''You going to be mad at her because she's fine? Get over it. I'm going to watch it because she's dope.''

JC Chasez will be supporting Britney Spears at the SECC, Glasgow, tonight.