James Morrison, Brighton Dome, Thur, Mar 8

12:17pm Friday 2nd March 2007

Sacked from his job scrubbing hire vans, then unheard of singer James Morrison might have thought his chips were down.

But Lady Luck, or the big boys from Polydor, smiled on him and within 18 months he'd shifted more than a million copies of his debut album Undiscovered and had bagged Best Male at the Brits.

But professionally and personally Morrison comes with a lot of baggage. Professionally, there are the constant comparisons to the critics' personal pet hate James Blunt. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter from Rugby arrived in the wake of Captain Blunt and his first single, You Give Me Something, was dubbed the You're Beautiful of 2006.

While it's Morrison's gravelly, soulful voice that sets him apart from Blunt's nasal whine, it's this saving grace that nearly killed him.

"Technically I died four times," says Morrison, who developed whooping cough at a few weeks old.

"The doctors said there was a 75 per cent chance I'd have brain damage."

But the cough was the least of his worries.

Morrison's personal baggage has seen him marketed as a young, white singersongwriter who turned to music to help him deal with an awful childhood (drunken father, neglectful mother, serious illness and friends who died because of drugs).

While he was dragging himself up, Morrison listened to everything from Pink Floyd to Van Morrison to Stevie Wonder. "I was always obsessed with their voices," he says. "All these fantastic singers who could express how they felt through their voice. I always wanted to know how I could use my voice in that way."

After moving to Derby, Morrison was fired from his job as a van cleaner and started trying to get gigs - which is when his luck changed. He was picked up by David Gray's former A&R man and landed a deal with Polydor.

Since then he's turned down a lead role in a Hollywood film, supported Corrine Bailey Ray on tour, was moved to the main stage at V Festival because he was too popular for the small tent and has had an album go platinum.

"It makes my head spin," he says. "If I'd had a good life and it was all sorted before, and then I'd got a deal, maybe I wouldn't be so spun out by it. But I never had anything, so to be in this position, where I've got so many choices, is amazing."

• Doors 7pm, tickets £15. Sold out.