Will Young's rider has just arrived. It's a trolley brimming over with bottles of vodka, sachets of suspicious white powder, and DVDs of hardcore eastern European pornography.

I'm joking, of course. Nothing could be further from the public image of William Robert Young. He's the nice guy of pop: level-headed, sane, self-aware. The aforementioned rider is actually stocked with bottles of water, Coke (as in Coca-Cola), a variety of teas, honey and a heady stash of lemon and fresh ginger.

Young opens the door of his dressing room in the cramped upstairs section of Dublin's Olympia Theatre, where he was performing that night, and offers Day & Night a warm welcome in between chomps on a banana. He's dressed very -- dare I say it -- trendily, in a dark cardigan, long denim shorts and boots, and he is sporting some model-esque designer stubble.

He just got off the bus from Belfast where he was performing the night before. He is a little tired but good-humoured and unfailingly polite, offering to make tea or coffee with a passion that would make Father Ted's Mrs Doyle proud.

Settling himself on the sofa, Young admits that being back in Dublin for his Greatest Hits tour (more of that anon) has a nice professional and personal symmetry to it. "I spent a lot of time here at the start of my career," he says. "Dublin was my home away from home, really. I was working with Biff [songwriter Richard 'Biff' Stannard] who used to have a studio here.

"We stayed in the Clarence, but I used to spend a lot of time on my own. I'd go to cafés by myself, and go out on my own, which, in retrospect, was quite brave, because everything was so insane after Idol. I took up Irish dancing, too. The teacher's name was Olive Hurley. I did a few lessons -- I still have my shoes, in fact."

It's nearly eight years since Young, then a recent politics graduate, beat Gareth Gates in the final of the first ever Pop Idol (the pre-cursor to the all-conquering X Factor), and it's fair to say that he has enjoyed a level of success that the cynics and detractors of Simon Cowell's talent show format would never have predicted at the time. He has had four number ones, nine top-10 singles and won two Brit Awards.

Now aged just 30, Young has compiled his singles (plus two new ones) on a new album The Hits. "People might think that I'm retiring and that I should get a silver clock or something," he says, flashing that wide grin. "Releasing a greatest hits at this point would feel scary if I didn't have another album coming up. This album, though, feels more celebratory, and I normally don't do celebrations, so this is new for me."

Young recently returned to his reality show roots by helping Cheryl Cole to pick her final acts for the current series of X Factor. "I think people are less dismissive of performers who come through these shows than they were when I started," he says. "I don't say that out of bitterness at all, but there was a little snobbery. To be honest, I was my own worst critic. So if someone had told me, 'that's shit', then I'd have accepted that it was shit. I just decided to keep my head down and get on with it. I think that's all you can do if you really want to stick around in anything."

Over the past eight years there has been zero front-page-of-the-Sunday-tabloids/ falling-out-of-nightclubs scandal associated with Young. "If anything happens, it's not where people can see it," he jokes. "Besides, it's never that interesting."

The most attention he has received in his private life has concerned his own sexuality, and the personal difficulties of his twin brother Rupert. Young publicly came out as gay a month after winning Pop Idol in February 2002, and all to little or no negative comment then or since.

The late Stephen Gately had broken new ground for gay pop stars by disclosing his own homosexuality three years before that, but, perhaps surprisingly, Young reveals that he and Gately didn't know each other. "We met only once I think," he recalls.

Meanwhile, his brother Rupert very publicly battled with alcoholism and depression. Young has since revealed that Rupert once slit his wrists just as Will was preparing for his first live Pop Idol show in late 2001. For the next several years, Rupert's troubles became Will's, until finally his brother defeated his demons and founded a charity, the Mood Foundation, to help others going through similar problems.

Since then, Will has admitted to seeing a therapist to get his head around all that has happened. "I'm a big advocate of it," he begins, before hesitating. "I've probably talked about it too much, but I do so partly out of pride, because I'm so proud of what Rupert's done and what he's achieved.

"I don't care what people think about my own going to therapy, it's really worked for me. It's like if someone asks you to recommend a good mechanic to mend your car. That's why I talk about it."

Turning 30 in January has also helped to crystallise a lot of things in Young's head. "I remember after winning Pop Idol, I said to myself, 'You know what? If this finishes within a year, I can still say on my 30th birthday, "I fucking did it, I tried. I won't regret not doing it'''. I could do without a few of the wrinkles or bags under my eyes, but I don't mind. I feel more chilled out now."

I joke about how the 30th birthday is considered "gay death". Young roars laughing. "Tell me about it! I was out a while ago, and I was talking to someone who was 20, and he asked how old I was. I told him, and he was like, 'Awww, that's alright.' I thought to myself, 'Fucking hell: so it begins!'"

Young reveals that he's single at the moment, adding that his fame has never been an impediment to forming or maintaining a relationship. "I actually always say that it makes easier to meet people," he says. "I'm the guy who doesn't get served at the bar even though I'm waving my £10 note in the air. I am that loser, so being famous is like a bit of an ice-breaker. If I said being famous makes relationships difficult, it's a bit of a cop-out. Relationships are always difficult, I think it's other stuff that makes them hard."

While we're on the topic, I mention how in the video for his new single, Hopes and Fears, Young appears as a pregnant man. Would he like kids some day? "Yes I'm very broody at the moment -- it's quite scary actually," he laughs. "It's at the point where I offered to buy my friend's kids the other day -- and he accepted, which is even scarier. But yes, at some point down the line I would like children."

In the meantime, Young has an ever-expanding career to focus on. In addition to singing, he's received glowing reviews for his acting work, first in the movie Mrs Henderson Presents, opposite Judi Dench, and then on stage in Noel Coward's The Vortex.

"I love it," he says. "I have two more things coming out: I have a Miss Marple and an episode of Skins, in which I felt very old and unattractive playing a teacher. It's a very funny role.

"There are no movies in the pipeline at the moment, but I'm slowly, steadily getting there. Next year I want to get some voice work done and go out to LA for a little bit. When people say they're going out to LA, what do they actually do? I'll just sit by the pool and meet one casting director, but I can still say, 'I'm going to LA'. It'll probably be shit, but it will be sunny shit."

Will Young: The Hits is out now on Sony Music

- Declan Cashin

Irish Independent