The tenor Russell Watson was born in Salford, Manchester, in 1966. Despite being untrained he is one of the biggest-selling classical singers in the world and won the album of the year award at the Classical Brits in 2001 and 2002. A Manchester United fan, he performed at the memorial service for George Best last week. He lives in Cheshire and has two children, Rebecca, 11, and Hannah, 5, from his marriage to Helen, from whom he split in 2001.

Russell Watson has had more than his fair share of lucky breaks. Take his recent success on the BBC talent show Just the Two of Us, which partnered professional singers and non-singing celebrities. With the actress Sian Reeves he won the series in front of 7m viewers. It was a stroke of luck because he was asked to take part only after one of the stars dropped out at the last minute.

The victory epitomises Watson’s career. A one-time bolt-cutter in a Manchester factory, he was spotted singing in a small club in Wigan and has since become a multi-million-selling artist who has performed in front of royalty, the Pope and President Bush, who was left moist-eyed by Watson’s rendition of Nessun Dorma.

All this he takes in his stride, but there is one aspect of fame that he has yet to get used to — cars. “Five years ago nobody would give me the keys to their Mini or Ford Fiesta. Now I get people in the car industry saying, ‘Would you like to drive a Maserati for a month and see whether you like it?’ Yes, please! It’s one of the best perks of being a star — I get to drive loads of different cars.

“The Maserati was nice, but the most incredible experience I’ve had in a car was in the Porsche 928. You could feel the roar of the engine vibrating through your whole body. The only reason I didn’t buy it was that when I took my dad out for a spin he said, ‘This is not the car for you, Russell. You’ll end up killing yourself’.”

His father had a point. Watson describes his driving style as exuberant, saying he still enjoys the odd race at traffic lights and confessing that in his younger days he was “a bit of cad” behind the wheel.

His first car, bought when he was 17, seems to back up the boy racer image: a Talbot Sunbeam customised to the hilt with racing mudflaps, go-faster stripes, a chrome tailpipe, furry dice, and black Hammerite paint on the bottom half. He says he used it for rally driving on scrubland near his home but eventually wrote it off with youthful recklessness.

Today he owns a BMW X5. “It’s not very green, but it’s strong, solid and relaxing. It’s like sitting in a lounge on wheels.”

Watson’s road to stardom began when he started singing to help supplement his income and keep the bailiffs from the door of his home in Salford, Manchester. After winning a local radio competition he took up singing full-time, working the gruelling northern club scene, belting out the classic Elvis and Sinatra numbers to largely indifferent crowds.

Then one night in Wigan his luck changed. He was asked to have a go at Puccini’s Nessun Dorma and the result was an improbable standing ovation. The success led to an invitation to perform in front of 60,000 football fans at Old Trafford, home of his beloved Manchester United, which in turn led to a six-figure record deal with Decca. His debut album, The Voice — a mix of classical and pop favourites — was released in late 2000 and became an instant bestseller, topping the classical charts in both Britain and the US.

One of the first things he did was go out and buy a car, but it wasn’t quite the success he had hoped. “Never buy your dream car, especially if it’s a vintage car,” he says, “because you may be unpleasantly surprised by the reality. I bought a blue 1974 Jaguar E-type when I had my first hit and I only kept it for four months.

“I realised it wasn’t as quick as I originally thought when I was up against a Ford Sierra at the traffic lights. The Sierra went flying off and I was left stranded with my back wheels spinning.

“The car was incredibly difficult to control in the rain and it spent half its time in the garage being repaired. It got to the point where I could smell fumes while driving and I thought, ‘Surely this can’t be good for my voice — it has got to go’.”

After the Jaguar he bought a TVR Cerbera. “The TVR was a year or two old when I got it — they’d just discontinued making them and I really wanted one. It was more like a hot rod than a car, very James Bond-esque. You can imagine it in one of the old Fifties movies, it’s got a real classic look about it.

“But I hardly drove it — it wasn’t very comfortable. You had to be a contortionist just to put the seatbelt on.”

In fact, today the one-time boy racer from Salford prefers not to drive at all. He even laments the lack of manners on the road — “There seems to be very little courtesy these days, everybody’s rushing to get where they’re going” — and says that because of his busy schedule he opts to be driven as much as possible, especially since the release of his greatest-hits album last week. He uses the time to work on his music — though he says he doesn’t actually sing in the car.

But his boy racer instinct hasn’t been completely banished. “My driver Paul has a Chrysler Grand Voyager,” he says, “and he’s got it rigged out with an 18in TV screen for DVDs and there’s a Sony PlayStation in there. It’s boys’ toys time — it’s where I chill.”

ON HIS CD CHANGER

Jump Back, the hits compilation by the Rolling Stones, is terrific driving music. The Sex Pistols, Kiss This. I was a kid when this band were big and it was such an amazing time to be young

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