Darius Danesh rode the reality TV wave – but it couldn’t happen now

Darius Campbell Danesh, the Glasgow-born singer and actor who has died aged 41, will be remembered in many quarters for his vainglorious and preposterous rendition of Britney Spears’s Baby One More Time on the ITV talent show Popstars in 2001. However, the entertainer’s legacy is far richer, and his achievements broader, than this cringeworthy clip suggests.

Campbell Danesh succeeded where countless other reality TV stars failed: he turned his fifteen minutes of fame into a career that saw him top the singles chart, become a leading man in West End musicals, and perform in Bizet’s Carmen at London’s O2. That he achieved all this with moderate – rather than abundant – talent simply underlines the astuteness of his choices and his determined sense of self-belief. Campbell Danesh, who was found dead in his US apartment in Minnesota, was also a product of his time.

We won’t see his like again. Anyone over the age of forty might view the reality TV bubble of the first 15 years of the 21st century – typified by shows such as Pop Idol, The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent – as a recent trend. But its heyday existed in an era when terrestrial TV had not been undermined by Netflix or Disney+, and when social media platforms TikTok and Instagram hadn’t been invented. Campbell Danesh was one of the last stars of “appointment to view”, cross-generational TV. And he used the broad appeal this afforded him to carve out his varied career.

Because forging a successful career from the glistening goldfish bowl of reality TV has always been about choices. And Campbell Danesh, for all his cheesiness, made the right choices early on. Having appeared in Popstars in 2001, he was voted into the finals of similar show Pop Idol the following year. His success there saw judge Simon Cowell, who went on to launch The X Factor, offer him a recording contract.

But the Scot stunned media and fans alike by turning Cowell down. Instead, he joined up with U2 and Morrissey producer Steve Lillywhite. His first single, the Lillywhite-produced Colourblind, was a chart-topper. It was correct choice number one. Campbell Danesh had bought himself credibility.

Four other top ten singles followed. But Campbell Danesh’s second correct choice was realising, in 2005, that pop music was a fickle game. So he moved into musical theatre. At 25 he became the youngest actor to play Billy Flynn in Chicago since the show opened in 1975. He then played Sky Masterson in an Oliver Award-winning production of Guys & Dolls. Many then saw his next role as Rhett Butler in Trevor Nunn’s 2008 stage adaptation of Gone With The Wind as a failure. Yes, the show received scathing reviews and closed after just 79 performances (one reviewer wrote, “Frankly, I fear, you won’t give a damn”). But it is wrong to view Campbell Danesh’s role through the prism of a doomed production.

Rather, here was a performer from a gaudy reality TV show who was deemed to have the singing chops and stage presence to play Butler in a huge West End musical. Campbell Danesh returned to reality TV in 2010 when he won Popstar to Operastar, which did what it said on the tin. Later that year, he played handsome toreador Escamillo in Carmen at the O2.

Campbell Danesh was wily. He was aware that for all the corniness of reality TV, it was a medium that “made stars of everyday people”, as historian Alwyn Turner puts it. The singer knew that the broad church appeal of such TV gave him a wide fanbase, which in turn allowed him to rove from being a pop star to being a stage singer. This simply wouldn’t happen now.

Back in 2001 two generations of a family – or even three ­­– would crowd around a TV set for an evening’s entertainment. No longer. New research from regulator Ofcom has found that people aged 13-to-24 today spend more time watching video site TikTok each day than they do watching traditional TV channels (57 minutes versus 53 minutes a day respectively).

These days, the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing is really the last mass-entertainment mainstream TV show. The world of entertainment has atomised beyond recognition since Campbell Danesh first graced our screens. Campbell Danesh’s career should therefore be celebrated. While not in the league of reality TV alumni such as One Direction or Little Mix, he had a career with far more variety and bite than the likes of Matt Cardle, Shayne Ward or even Leona Lewis.

The closest comparison I can think of is Rylan, who came fifth in the ninth series of The X Factor in 2012 and is now a successful BBC radio DJ. On reporting Campbell Danesh’s death, the Broadway World website went so far as to call him a “West End veteran”. That’s quite an accolade. So forget that Britney clip. There was more to this entertainer than met the eye.