He says: “I wasn’t sure how to cope with the transition from being nobody, a person that didn’t contribute to society, to someone who had a purpose.
“I had come from nothing, living rough or staying in awful bedsits. Then suddenly everyone had an opinion about me and I was staying in nice hotels.
“I would read everything that was said about me, all the criticism about the way I looked. I had been meeting a lot of influential people in music and it was freaking me out a bit.
“I was so tired and I was trying to get to grips with my reality, which was a world away from Middlesbrough.”