Smash hit

“The album didn’t sell and the radio wouldn’t play the singles, but it didn’t feel like a failure,” he says. “The whole thing just seemed a bonus. There was no thought of money or a career or anything like that, I was just some bedroom recording enthusiast with a day job. But a lot of people who got that first album are quite fond of it.”

Relocating to Brighton, and sustained by a small US publishing deal, Allsopp admits that he smoked more dope than was necessarily big or clever. On Glory Days, he sings about how he “stayed in my house for days with my weed psychosis”. Indeed, there’s something of a sweet, lingering fug to many of the tracks sketched out during this period, most of which would eventually find their way on to Overtones. The problem was finding someone ready to support him in an industry where second chances are filed next to hen’s teeth.

Enter, perhaps with a flash of smoke, the unlikely figure of Elton John. He’d heard Allsopp’s debut and was indeed quite fond of it. Vociferously so, in fact. A deal with his management company, 21st Century Artist, was duly signed, which in turn lead to a new record deal. The unavoidable mental image is of Elton dressed as a fairy godmother. Tell this to Allsopp, though, and for the first time he appears riled.

“That really annoys me,” he says, before breaking back into a grin. “I tell people that he helped me out, and they always say, ‘Like a fairy godmother?’ No… like a music lover who likes to bring talent through.”

Nevertheless, in a matter of weeks Allsopp was transformed from being too paranoid to go to the supermarket, to being a guest at Elton’s wedding reception in Windsor.

“It was the first time I’ve worn a dinner jacket,” he admits. “Most people think of the celebrities at those things, but I honestly wasn’t bothered about sitting next to the guys from Little Britain or Gordon Ramsay. I was more excited about my girlfriend and me getting to dress up and get drunk on pink champagne. I felt like a usurper.”

He returns from his mum and dad’s kitchen with two cups of tea, and you believe him about not being interested in celebrity. He only gets bashful when he talks about recording a track with Kylie for the US version of Overtones. Tonight he’s DJing at a James Blunt gig, but only because he’s getting paid silly money to do it. On the way out, we pass an old mountain bike in the hallway. It’s his.

“I still ride it everywhere,” he smiles. “I used to want to be one of those bike geeks, but I never had the cash. But now I’ve got the money, I don’t want to get a nice bike,” he says, looking out of the window on to his street. “In Camden, it’d just get stolen.”

Just Jack’s new single, No Time, is out now

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