James Blunt: ‘Do I have a nickname? Yes, it rhymes with blunt’

The singer on his love for Ibiza, the weirdest thing he’s done in the name of romance, and being signed up for Celebrity Traitors against his will

You were a punching bag for such a long time after You’re Beautiful became a massive hit, but your consistent good humour is deeply admirable. Does it ever get tiring?

It was a surprise, at the beginning. I was just a little guy with a dream. And when you achieve your dream, you think people would be happy for you. For them not to be happy for you, but angry with you, for your song, seems irrational, an overreaction. It is interesting how people generally want to tear people down for achieving their little dreams. But I’d had a real proper job before that [as a captain in the British army]. My friends might have been on operations in Afghanistan or Iraq, so if I were to complain to them at the time saying, “Oh, the Guardian said something really horrid about me and gave me three stars for my album” – they would be able to talk about who had lost their lives or limbs that day, and that put it all in perspective. And perspective is everything.

Then you start thinking really clearly. A journalist might say, “Hey, I read something negative about you online” – I can either start defending that or put it in perspective, which is: I’ve just played a concert to 15,000 people and those 15,000 people spent really hard-earned money to buy a ticket and booked hotels or flights to get there and queued up and, if it’s in England, queued in the rain. So am I really going to get upset by one negative tweet when 15,000 people really invested themselves in me? It’s all about perspective.

What is the best thing about owning two pubs?

The staff in my pubs, because of who I am and the shame they sometimes feel, try to keep me out back doing the dishes rather than front of house. I understand why. It is how we roll.

Ed Sheeran and Carrie Fisher are the godparents of your children. What wisdom did you hope each of them would impart?

I hoped Carrie would look after herself. That’s why I asked her to be a godmother – I could see a destructive human being and I wanted her to care enough for herself that my son might know her. And it wasn’t to be.

And Ed and I had a very similar journey. We were singer-songwriters inspired by similar musicians, found ourselves managed by the same management, found ourselves signed to the same record label – but he just did it better. If you’re going to have your child be inspired by someone, point them in the direction of someone who does it better than you.

I understand you love a rave. How often do you get to one?

Not as much as I’d like, to be honest. I live in Ibiza and my favourite nightclub is a club called Pacha, which opened in 1973. When I was 13 years old, I was on a family holiday here and I walked past Pacha and told my friend, “I am going to live here, and I am going to go to that club.” The moment my first album, Back to Bedlam, became a hit, the first thing I did was buy a house in Ibiza, which is where I’m calling you from now. I later moved to Ibiza when I was a pariah in my own country and I wrote All the Lost Souls, a pretty dark and miserable second album. But the thing that kept me going was the dancefloor in Pacha … I wrote a song called 1973, the year Pacha opened. And then the DJ Pete Tong remixed it, so I would be in that club, listening to my own song, about the club that I was in – which is kind of mental.

There are other clubs I really love. Ushuaïa is like a Miami pool party and they’ll occasionally ask me to perform there. Sometimes I’ll drive down there, I park out the front, the security walk me to the stage and hand me a microphone, I’ll climb on to the stage, sing, crowd surf, go back on the stage, sing the final chorus, hand the microphone over, walk off the stage and drive home to put my kids to bed. That is either really rock’n’roll or really square, I am not sure which.

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

What is the weirdest thing you have done for love?

Obviously I am a purveyor of saccharine songs, so I need to up my game when it comes to romance. So last Valentine’s Day, I hired a helicopter, flew over my house and threw 100,000 red rose petals at my wife in the garden below. I thought that was pretty good. She thought it was OK.

Who would you like to play you in the biopic about your life?

My mother really thought Tom Cruise but, if I’m totally honest, I know it’s more likely to be Alan Partridge.

I do a really good gorilla impression. And! [James Blunt uses his brow to wiggle his scalp so it moves distinctly from his face] I actually have a wig that no one knows about. I don’t know anyone else can do that but I literally can move my whole scalp and hair as if it were a wig. It’s real. I haven’t managed to monetise it.

Yes, it rhymes with blunt and it’s a tiny bit shorter. It’s character building!

Actually, it is bizarre that my name later became cockney rhyming slang for that. That’s one of my greatest achievements. I have a few things that I find genuinely an achievement – like I have a ski lift named after me in Switzerland, and a burger named after me. But to have cockney rhyming slang for your own name is amazing.

I have also heard about the James Blunt Museum, in a Herefordshire phone booth.

Yeah, a huge, huge deal for me as well. I have been known to go there just to give it a quick clean from time to time. It’s not too far, just a quick six-hour drive. I go there for the morning, clean it, head back home. It’s worth a visit if you find yourself in the northern hemisphere. I really recommend it.

Final question – you were just on Celebrity Traitors. If you could be on another reality show, what would it be?

I swore that I would never do a reality show. Ever. And I have lived and breathed by that proclamation. My manager doesn’t even bring me those shows. But my wife signed me up to this without telling me. And I really wish she hadn’t.

James Blunt’s new album, Airplane Mode, is out now (Warner Music)