IT’S easy to forget Joe McElderry is still only 22. Just going through everything the young singer has achieved since winning the X Factor back in 2009 is simply staggering.

He says: “I had just turned 18. It’s incredible when I think about it now because I really was just a child, so inexperienced in this world and I’m plonked in the middle of something like that.

“In some respects though that was kind of me serving my apprenticeship.

“You make mistakes, you learn from them and then carry on. To learn about the business I needed that to happen so I could grasp it all.”

After winning the competition, beating Witham’s Olly Murs into second place, his music career has not exactly been plain sailing.

South Shields born Joe did experience immediate chart success with debut single the Climb, which did exactly that, right to the Number One spot, although the internet campaign to get Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name to the top of the charts denied him the Christmas Number One.

Then despite his first album, Wide Awake, reaching number three in the charts, Joe parted company with Simon Cowell’s Syco label less than 18 months after winning show.

He says: “At the time I was thinking, ‘Oh my god’, but I kept working on things like the Popstar to Operastar TV show.

“I sat back and watched and took note of everything, so when I signed with Universal I was more strict with myself and the label, in a creative way.

“It makes you better and stronger. I was allowed to go off and decide my own path so it was actually one of the best things that could have happened.”

Joe was also pretty clever when it came to keeping his profile up, agreeing to appear on a number of television reality shows, including Popstar to Operastar, which he won, and most recently Channel Four’s crazy Winter Olympics show, the Jump, which saw Joe along with a whole host of other celebs compete in a number of Winter Olympic sports such as ski-jumping, speed skating and the skeleton.

He also won that!

“I’m quite a competitive guy,” he laughs, “and so there was this constant battle in my head with one half saying ‘we’ve got to win this thing, let’s go for it’ and the other saying ‘hang on let’s be a bit careful here, you’ve got a big tour coming up’.

“We all had an incredible time doing it, although doing the skeleton was probably the most terrifying thing I have ever done. It was like being in a car crash that doesn’t stop.

“I just thought why am I doing this, hurtling down this track at 70mph.

“It was horrendous.”

For the next few months Joe is back on a more familiar footing, as he continues his huge 60-date national tour, which this weekend reaches a place he knows very well indeed, the Customs House in his home town of South Shields.

Unsurprisingly his three concerts there are already a sell-out.

“The really weird thing about that place is I used to work there,” he tells me. “I used to be a dishwasher in the kitchen of the restaurant there.

“Sometimes if they had a function there after washing the dinner service I would go into the restaurant and sing for 20 minutes before coming back into the kitchen to wash up the dessert plates.”

But then Joe has never been one to shirk hard work.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Joe adds. “I see some of these other young singers and the way they act, and think to myself ‘what are you doing’. I certainly don’t see myself as some kind of role model but I do realise there’s a responsibility to conduct yourself in a certain way.”

And Joe most definitely does that with a commitment to charitable work unrivalled among his peers.

As a regional ambassador for the Teenage Cancer Trust, he completed the challenging 140-mile three-day bike ride Coast to Coast with friends and family, raising more than £11,000 for the charity.

He has also recorded the charity single One World One Song with the legendary Dionne Warwick in aid of the Hunger Project UK, and a moving version of Abide With Me with the Royal Mail Choir, in aid of Prostate Cancer UK.

Early this year, Denise Welch and Tim Healy presented Joe with a Silver Heart Award on behalf of Variety, the Children’s Charity, for his charity work.

He says: “I’ve been very lucky to find myself in the position that I am and I’m always happy to help. These charities all do incredible work, so really it’s the least I can do.”

Joe McElderry
Princes Theatre,
Station Road, Clacton.
April 12. 7.30pm.
£19.50 adults, £18.50
concessions.
Call 01255 686633.