The Scottish singer Darius Campbell Danesh, who has died suddenly aged 41, burst into the early world of reality television when he appeared on the talent show Popstars, the first of its kind, in 2001.
As Darius Danesh he sported a ponytail, radiated self-confidence and looked a potential winner, at his most dramatic performing an over-the-top, falsetto version of the Britney Spears hit … Baby One More Time – before the judges, Nigel Lythgoe, Nicki Chapman and Paul Adam, sent him packing halfway through the series. He admitted that: “I wouldn’t have voted for me.”
Nevertheless, the 20-year-old – in the middle of studying English and philosophy at Edinburgh university – told “Nasty Nigel” that he would record a platinum-winning album by the time he was 30.
He went straight into Popstars’ successor, Pop Idol, later that year, allaying any ideas that presentation overshadowed substance. He came third, behind Gareth Gates and the winner, Will Young, but turned down a recording contract offered to him by Simon Cowell, who was making his name as a judge and TV personality after years working as a record company executive.
Photograph: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy
Cowell had plans for Darius to release a cover version of the Tom Jones hit It’s Not Unusual, but he wanted to record his own material. “I thought if I released It’s Not Unusual I would be selling myself short,” he said. Instead, Darius – as he would be credited on disc – signed to Mercury Records to make his first album, Dive In (2002), with Steve Lillywhite, who launched the career of U2, as executive producer. Darius wrote all the songs and it became a Top 10 hit that quickly fulfilled his vow to go platinum.
He also went straight to No 1 that year with his debut single, Colourblind. In its video, Darius is seen being thrown out of a car in the middle of Spain’s Sierra Nevada, dressed in a black suit and holding his guitar, before changing into jeans – signifying that he was leaving his Pop Idol image behind.
He followed Colourblind with another four Top 10 singles, then carved out a new career in musical theatre. He played the defence lawyer Billy Flynn for two runs in the West End revival of Chicago at the Adelphi theatre in 2005 and 2006. Although there had been some scepticism about this casting, Darius proved an adept stage star and made a brief return to the part in 2011, as well as touring with the show in 2017. Following his first stint in Chicago, he was taken seriously enough to be given the starring role of Sky Masterson in the director Michael Grandage’s Olivier award-winning production of Guys and Dolls (Piccadilly theatre, 2007).
The following year, directed by Trevor Nunn, he starred as Rhett Butler in the original production of Gone With the Wind (New London theatre, 2008), Margaret Martin’s musical adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s epic novel. The sprawling three-hour show received a critical battering and ended after eight weeks, although there was some praise for him. Paul Taylor wrote in the Independent: “The diabolically dashing Darius Danesh (of Pop Idol fame) brings a seductively insolent charm, a dark velvet voice and a genuine, fugitive pathos to the cynical blockade runner.”
Later, he was back in the West End starring as First Sergeant Milt Warden in the world premiere of From Here to Eternity (Shaftesbury theatre, 2013-14), a musical written by Tim Rice with Stuart Brayson and Bill Oakes, based on James Jones’s novel. It opened to mixed reviews and ran for six months.
of Gone With the Wind at the New London theatre in 2008. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Critics were more enthusiastic about the West End revival (2015-16) of Funny Girl, in which Darius played the gambler Nick Arnstein, opposite Sheridan Smith’s Fanny Brice. It opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory, with one reviewer noting the “caddish charm” he brought to the role, before moving to the Savoy theatre.
Born in Glasgow, Darius was the eldest of three sons of a Scottish mother, Avril (nee Campbell), a GP, and an Iranian father, Booth Danesh, a gastroenterologist, and was brought up in Bearsden, East Dunbartonshire.
He was just 12 when he took to the stage with Scottish Opera in the non-singing role of a Trojan boy in an avant-garde production of The Trojans. Then he toured with the company in Carmen, which included a performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
On leaving Glasgow academy, he yearned to train as an actor at Rada, but his parents wanted him to become a doctor or lawyer. He said going to university was a compromise.
Failing to make it into the final 10 of Popstars meant Darius would not be part of Hear’Say, the band formed by the five winning contestants, or Liberty X, comprising the runners-up.
But Pop Idol set him on his way and he followed Colourblind in the singles chart with Rushes (2002) and Incredible (What I Meant to Say), the following year. A second album, Live Twice (2004), proved to be his final LP, hovering outside the Top 30, although it did produce two Top 10 singles, Kinda Love (2004) and the title track (2005). His 2003 memoir, Sink or Swim: My Story, was a bestseller.
He returned to reality television to win the first series of Popstar to Operastar (2010) and even managed to break into feature film-making, as a producer credited as Darius Campbell, on Imperium (2016), and Tomorrow (2018).
In 2011, Darius married the Canadian actor and model Natasha Henstridge; they divorced in 2018. He is survived by his parents and his brothers, Cyrus and Aria.