HE MAY look just like a fresh-faced young tyke from Liverpool who was pipped at the post for the X-Factor top spot by Leona Lewis, but then his own album, sponsored by Simon Cowell, rocketed to the Number One spot within days of release earlier this year.
And, even though some fans were a tad miffed when they were charged £16 to hear the lad from Childwall play a homecoming gig in Liverpool and only manage to warble five songs, he’s still pulling the punters in to his shows, as a three-night fast-selling appearance this week at the Empire Theatre demonstrates.
The album – Doing It My Way – was actually recorded in the legendary Capitol Studios den, in Los Angeles, where one of Ray’s heroes, the mighty Frank Sinatra, once stretched his tonsils.
"I had to pinch myself about that," admitted 19-year old Ray, who is actually, as all his fans will know, no stranger to showbiz, having launched his television career at the tender age of eight in Phil Redmond’s glorious but now late and much lamented Brookside soap.
As for that X-Factor close shave, the truth is that Ray had some time before won the Search for a Star competition, trousering five grand into the bargain. So, the lad is well and truly burnished by the razzle- dazzle lights.
His fascination with the swish sounds of Sinatra and the so-called Rat Pack began, reveals Ray rather impishly, when he was only 14, after discovering his two elder brothers’ record collection. There he fell upon the swing and jazz with a delight that was to influence his own style, although his brothers must surely have been regarded as rather old fashioned and out of the pale, so to speak, by their own pals.
Ray remarked: "I was born in the wrong year, really. I’m probably the only 19-year-old in Liverpool who knows so much about that stuff. Instead of dance music blasting out of my car, I’ll have a swing tune turned up loud. Everything about it is so cool." Quite.
Mind you, Ol’ Blue Eyes and his Boys would probably raise more than an eyebrow at Ray’s somewhat strident views on excess. "Drink and drugs are not for me," he told the Daily Mirror about his time in Hollywood recording that debut album.
"If I have the odd drink I come out in spots," he added, which is similar some might think to Dean Martin’s reflections on drinking, although, of course, he confessed he saw spots instead.
In the summer, Ray – who received a staggering 3m votes in the final of X-Factor, and 6m throughout the whole shindig – was chosen as a judge in ITV’s Baby Ballroom show, along with Bonnie Langford, another child protégé, and Pierre Dulaine, who wasn’t. And recently the comedian Jimmy Carr has declared that he would want the mightily-quiffed one to play him in a movie, although he rather mockingly – and bizarrely – added that it was because he thought Ray looked like a vampire.
Ray clearly won’t bat an eye – if you’ll pardon the pun – at that remark, as he’s clearly on a roll and really pleased with his album.
"Anyone can swing, but you need to live and breathe it to really perform those songs in the manner they deserve," said the bloke who once ran screaming from a dance class. But that’s another story.
* RAY QUINN is at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool, from Thursday, October 25 to 27.
