Adam Rickitt has covered his six-pack, fizzled out his pop career and walked away from Weatherfield. But don't worry, the heart-throb is available for Rent.
Try to remember all you can about Adam Rickitt and the list will most likely run something like this: girly looks; floppy hair;contender for Plank Award for his performance as Nicky Tilsley in Coronation Street;had a teen pop career that lasted a few minutes and depended mostly on flashing his six-pack....
Now, allow Adam himself systematically to dismantle that view. "People say, "Oh you've had your hair cut, it's a major image change." Well it was something I wanted to do for years but it was in my contract that I wasn't allowed to," says the 22-year-old actor, who has arrived for the interview alone - hardly the behaviour of a teen idol. "I was stuck with looking like a girl. As soon as I got out of music it was straight off to the hairdressers," he adds, rubbing his new crop.
In person, the features that were lit to resemble a sexually -confused woodland faun in a thousand glossy photo shoots are simply boy-next-door nice-looking. The six-pack is concealed under an unfashionable jumper and for the first time in his short but stellar career, Adam Rickitt looks genuinely relaxed.
He returned from a tour of south-east Asia a year ago and ended his pop career after one album and a hit single, I Breathe Again. "music just didn't inspire me. It's my own fault," he sighs , before launching into an explanation which suggest he has thought a lot about where that particular career move went wrong.
"I knew the industry would be hollow. I thought at least it'd be parties every night and hanging out with Kylie, but it wasn't. You're working every second, which I don't mind as long as what I'm doing inspires me, but it didn't. I realised that the only time I really enjoyed music was when I was in the studio writing. So even though it was a six album deal, they saw quite early on that I wasn't enjoying it as I should be. I didn't feel there was anything behind it."
Since then, Adam has been taking stock at his family's Cheshire farmhouse and pursuing his acting career. There's a role in the BBC1 soap, Doctors, but he is about to burst back into the spotlight with a lead role in Rent, the musical based on La Boheme. It's a delicate question, but how did a guy whose last big role featured all the impassioned delivery of a Post Office van land a role for which more seasoned thesps would kill? " I don't honestly know why they offered me the part in Rent," he admits. "I suppose they liked my voice, although it's all so computerised nowadays you could sound like Worzel Gummidge and they can morph it. I was probably the right height or something."
Adam had to have voice-coaching to acquire the necessary New York accent - a far cry from Nick's flat Weatherfield tones and his own well modulated ones. "I always wanted to act," explains Adam. "Being in the Street meant that everyone knew me as Nick and it seemed a good way to make people see me as someone else. Now when I walk down the street, people say "Oy, Adam, you tw*t!"
This funny, self-deprecation Adam Rickitt is not the pouting pin-up that half the teen population - straight and gay- were fantisising about a couple of years ago. " It sounds silly but all the screaming girls.. it doesn't feel real. You go home to your family, your brothers take the mickey out of you. I'm the first to admit I've had a sheltered life,. I grew up in the country and went to a boarding school. It was all just part of the business - be nice to everyone and all that."
Then came overnight fame with Corrie. "It was hard to adjust to" he admits. "There were all sorts of things you'd never normally consider - like I have a fairly smutty sense of humour and you can't show that on kids' TV. You have to cut everything sexual out of your personality and just come across as a womble. You have to be brilliant to pitch it right, like Ant and Dec but I always panicked."
Also unforeseen was the guilt he felt at failing to enjoy every second of success. "People would ask me, "Why aren't you enjoying yourself?" and I'd say "I am! I am! I'm having the time of my life..!" when really I just wanted to go home. But I hate hearing celebrities whine about their lives so if ever I feel down about it, I felt I was being ridiculous. But I needed to appreciate it more, not just have it given so easily."
Perhaps because fame struck so early and unexpectedly - he only turned up at the Coronation Street audition "for the experience" - Adam is the opposite of a prima donna. "there was that whole thing with people going, "Oh, he's taking his top off again". But when I was doing magazine shoots that was part of that work. I did what I was told."
And as for his gay icon status he professes flattered indifference. "I was detached from it all, but with pop the gay market is a big part of your audience. The press went on about whether I was gay but you can't say anything that would be perceived as negative because it alienates a big part of your fan base," he says.
His current level of success seems to suit him far more. "I've never had a chance to sit down and enjoy what's happened - I've been too panicked about the next move. So I took some time out. I thought either I do this now or in 10 years' time I'll end up in the Priory." It didn't concern him that time out might bring forward his sell-by date. "I've always had faith that if it happens, it happens and if it doesn't, it wasn't ever gong to, " he shrugs.
Fortunately for him, his new era success is happening in a way that satisfies him far more than past triumphs. Adam Rickitt? Plank, floppy hair, vacant teen idol? Forget it.
