As Darius Danesh crouches to sing to a tiny girl plucked from the audience, a Smash Hits photographer leaps on stage to snap the pair. This is not so much a gig as one big promotional opportunity - but then again, Darius's Herculean self-promotion has fuelled his rise from Popstars/Pop Idol rejection to chat-show ubiquity.

His much-discussed "charm" has taken his platinum Dive In album into the bedrooms of the nation's young females, but live, his guard drops. As the first pair of knickers hits the stage, Darius says: "Mmm, bigger than I'm used to. I prefer a slim G-string." He hurriedly adds: "I'm joking."

Then it's back to open-shirted bump'n'grind, every lyric delivered with an exaggerated thrust but without the self-parody of, say, Tom Jones or Shaggy. The audience is 90% female, 20% screaming. It's like watching a singing Chippendale.

Few people can seriously be here for the music, which chugs along inoffensively like something from a mid-1980s Pebble Mill at One. When the machinelike band break their chains to blast into something like Pink Floyd, the frontman tells them to stop: this show is about Darius, and nothing gets in the way.

With an oily expertise reminiscent of the Fast Show's Swiss Toni, he plays the underdog, thanking us for getting him "through a tough patch". (That's being voted off Pop Idol, incidentally, not cutting off his ponytail.) Then he reminds us that he writes his own songs, "not covers that some record producer tells you to". Moments later he is covering George Michael's Faith and Prince's Kiss.

Darius would desperately like to be a serious artist, or at least Tom Jones, but for however long he is with us, he will be Darius the reality-TV phenomenon. "People ask me how I got from the ponytailed prat [cheers from the crowd] to this self-confident artist," he tells us. He mentions his family. Then he says it is because of "all the great artists" (that's "the Beatles, Tom Jones and Robbie Williams"). But the real reason he has come out on top is "YOU! YOU! All of you!" Somehow, you see this coming like a pool of sick in the street, but unfortunately, Darius is more difficult to avoid.

· At St George's Hall, Bradford, tomorrow. Box office: 01274 752000. Then touring.