HOW could you not have preconceptions about meeting the mononymously named Rhydian? Putting aside Sharon Osbourne’s X Factor comments back in 2007, that the Welsh singer was “nauseating”, and lost somewhere up his own valley (she can be a little hard to like herself), there’s no question the watching world found it hard to take to this brash, mink-coated creature who made Scotland’s own super league egocentric Darius seem almost shy.

However, in his dressing room in Manchester’s Palace Theatre the young blond baritone (born Rhydian Roberts) offers several surprises. “Would you like a tea?” he asks in pleasant voice as he pulls off his beanie hat and flicks the kettle into life. “Sorry if I’m a bit smelly.”

The odour reference emerges because Rhydian has been out running and his tight training kit reveals a body more ripped than your granny’s knitting after the kitten’s been at it, which suggests a little self-absorption.

Looking back, was he as much of an X Factory anus as the sparkly suits, the overbearing performances and the declaration he wanted a knighthood suggested?

“Not quite as much as I was made out to be,” he says, grinning. “The producers on the show know exactly what they are doing and you certainly don’t, at least not in terms of the way they are going to sell you to the nation. They wanted me to appear the bad guy. The editing on the show made me look late, and I became aware very quickly X Factor didn’t give a flying s*** about me.”

He didn’t mind being cast as the pantomime villain? “No,” he maintains. “I never believed in the show in the first place. I just saw it as taking me to the next level. I knew what I was doing. I’m an opera singer and the truth is there aren’t too many who have become names in Britain. There’s only Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson and Alfie Boe. I knew I had a chance to make an impact.”

Rhydian certainly has a sense of self-worth. But you warm to his candidness. “And it wasn’t too hard to get noticed. There weren’t too many stand-out characters in the show; I was up against a brother/sister act (he rolls his eyes) and Leon Jackson from Scotland who up until then had been singing songs in his mother’s bedroom. (Jackson won the competition). So at least I got the casting directors along to see me.”

He certainly did. Musical theatre producers lined up Rhydian to star him in Les Mes, and a host of other shows followed. Now, he’s starring in the UK tour of classic musical theatre show Little Shop Of Horrors, playing the Dentist. It’s a great, fun musical with lots of pastiche songs, comedy moments and Fifties America B movie sensibilities, telling of a giant plant that eats humans. What did Producers see in him that made him perfect for the role? “That I’m a misogynistic, wife-beating drug-taker,” he says, laughing of the mad character who is all of these things. “I guess I get cast a lot as the bad guy. But I love the impact roles.”

He has enjoyed quite a few such as Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ and the Police Chief In We Will Rock You. “These are the roles I want. But they are not the ones I want to do for long stints. I’d go into the West End with Phantom for a year, but nothing else. I need to move forward.”

Just like a shark. Rhydian, he repeats many times, is looking ahead the whole time, for the big role, or the big song that will define him, and make him a lot of money. He likes money, and it seems he’s very good at making it. The singer has taken his earnings from shows and the 1m albums he’s sold and invested well. He reveals he owns two properties in the South of France and one in the Bahamas, as well as having a rental portfolio in London. “My challenge has been to earn twice the salary of the Prime Minister,” he says. “And I’ve been managing to do that.”

He’s also half of a management agency with more than 20 performers on the books and when you suggest, testing his sense of humour a little, it must be a nightmare looking after people like him, he laughs. “Yes, although I’m more involved in the creative side of things.”

Rhydian, who speaks Welsh, also has a show on Welsh TV. He’s a man who pushes himself hard. You bet however, with the constant work, the training to sculpt the perfect body shape, he doesn’t sleep well. “I don’t,” he admits. “My brain is always working on the next thing.”

What he has been able to do, he maintains, is cope with the media intrusion in his life, being in the eye of the storm, contending with the features which dissect his Christianity, his determination to save himself for the right woman. “I don’t really mind it,” he says. “I find generally journalists have been quite nice when they’ve met me. But to be honest, I don’t need headlines. I’ve been with showbiz the friends who read every one of the online comments about them at the end of newspaper features and that’s not me at all. I know it’s the work that matters. It’s not about how many Twitter followers you have, it’s whether you can do a job. And I want to be able to show I’m ready to move to the next level.”

Does the immense work ethic get in the way of relationships? “It does,” he says, shaking his white head in agreement. “I was going out with someone long term until last year, but it’s hard when you don’t live in one place for too long. Right now, I’m seeing someone with a child but I’ve said I can’t stay home and play daddy. I’ve got so much to do. And I tell women I don’t want to have the big house in the country and the two kids. At least, not now. Not at thirty-three. I’m ambitious and I want my career to be as successful as it can be, always moving up.”

Rhydian has always been focused, determined to succeed. As a teenager he looked to a career in rugby before music took over, winning a bursary to the Birmingham Conservatoire, where he was a “star pupil”. He knew however he wasn’t going to be a pop star. The white eyelashes just don’t work for bedroom posters. So he worked hard to get noticed. And yes, he chose a very direct approach but the loud showmanship displayed in the X Factor paid off.

Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not hard to like Rhydian at all, despite the fact he’s a self-proclaimed narcissist. You have to admire his focus, his sheer work rate, and as conversation develops another side to the man emerges. We talks again about the impact of shows such as X Factor on those who don’t go on to build a huge career, referencing the fate of Leon Jackson.

“The show makes you a star and then you are dropped and you worry because what do you do when you’ve had a Number One and then you have to go back to the old life? It must be hard. I know James Arthur has had another shot at it recently, but he is a big talent.”

He adds; “I almost feel like calling Leon and saying ‘How’s things going’.” But Rhydian won’t. Because he’s concerned of what the answer will be? “Yes, that’s the truth. But I should call him. I hope he’s okay.”

There’s little doubt Rhydian is vain and self-obsessed but where he varies from someone like Darius is he’s all too willing to own up to it. He’s also very clever, and balanced. “I go to Tesco and I don’t get noticed when I have a hat on. I’m not Harry Styles. And while I could go off right now and live in the South of France where the weather is much nicer what would I do all day? I have to keep improving, showing people what I can do. I know I’m not in the top league but I want to try and get there.”

Rhydian, as we see him on television, isn’t all an act. But he’s far from insincere. For example, a half hour after suggesting he was okay for his love life to be a series of hit and run incidents, a softer side is revealed.

“One day I’d like to become a dad, have a family,” he says in soft voice. “But not right now. There’s too much to be done. Meantime, I’ll keep training and working for the big chance. You’ve got to ride the horse that got you there.”

*Little Shop of Horrors, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, November 14-19.