Breakfast, bullying and Brexit with the barefooted busker

E NJA MI N Clementine is captivating company. The Mercur y Prize -winner speaks in fits and starts, choosing his words with the precision of the genius. Sometimes he gesticulates gracefully like a composer, sometimes he is ver y still. He deliberates over his arguments, eyes trained on the table, fingers swirling patterns on the tabletop like a fidgety child, And then, suddenly he is staring intensely and talking earnestly.

“I p e r s o n a l l y d o n’ t k n ow wha t nerves are,” he says, hushed, when we me e t at a n u p ma r ke t g re a s y spoon in St John’s Wood. “I don’t get scared when I’m going to play music. But I think something maybe my fears a re b u r i e d i n t o my songs. Because I’m singing them. So they’re buried under it… Do you know what I mean?”

Not entirely, but that’s part of his brand. At 27, singer-songwriter Clementine is the modern Renaissance man: the inscrutable, prodigious talent with no f or mal music a l t r a i ni ng who was discovered busking on the Paris Metro.

He grew up in Edmonton on the outskirts of north London, the youngest of five children born to strict parents. He failed all but one GCSE (English literature). Aged 16, he fell out with his family and went to live with a friend in Camden. They fell out too and at 19 he bought a one-way ticket to Paris.

He moved there with £60 and was periodically homeless for four years, gigging and busking. Eventually he was discovered by an enraptured agent and returned to London where he got a deal with EMI and released his album At Least for Now. Less than a year later he had won the Mercury.

It’s an extraordinary story, and he is an extraordinary presence: 6ft 3in and lanky, with dramatic ally sculpted cheekbones. He turns up wearing a suit without a shirt underneath — he must, surely, be aware of the effect.

He is also enchanting to listen to. His vowels veer from RP to Edmonton, his voice is deep and emotive. He flexes it across the key changes of brooding songs, and his performances seem raw and uncontrived — he plays without