The result is Mika, a young, London-based singer who has appeared from nowhere to go straight to the top of the charts. He's charming, he's 23 and, if you believe the hype, he's the biggest thing to hit pop for a generation.

Last week, Mika's debut single, "Grace Kelly", became the second track ever to reach number one on the strength of downloads alone (it isn't actually released until next week). His first album, Life in Cartoon Motion, will spark similar fireworks when it comes out in a fortnight.

A few days ago, a poll of senior music industry figures offered their endorsement, picking Mika as the brightest "new hope" for the "sound of 2007".

He's clocked up 22,000 friends on MySpace and is just back from New York, attempting to crack the US.

The Beirut-born prodigy has been signed up as a "face" of designer Paul Smith and is about to embark on a sell-out tour. He's done Jools Holland, met Cat Stevens and recently received an unsolicited piece of fan mail from a certain Brian May.

Like any new pop sensation, he is about to enter the international celebrity stratosphere. He is, ladies and gentlemen, the official biggest thing since. . . well, since the last big thing.

"The appeal of Mika to me, and I would imagine many others, is simple: he's a proper star, " says Q editor Paul Watts.

"He's brash, arrogant, looks great and is already fond of saying foolish things. He writes proper songs, with daft lyrics and big choruses. Would that there were more like him."

The single "Grace Kelly" is all these things, a catchy and inventive track (among other things, it samples the late princess of Monaco) about the difficulties of breaking into the pop industry.

Yet, for all the praise now being heaped upon the track, its curly-haired singer is no ordinary plastic pop poppet. Mika Penniman, to use his full name, was born in Beirut, at the height of the Lebanese civil war to an American businessman and a Lebanese mother.

The family evacuated to France in 1984, after Mika's father was taken hostage in Kuwait, and moved to an affluent area of London when Mika was nine.

A dyslexic, he was bullied at school and spent six months outside the educational system.

"I was the unconventional kid in school. I used to dress in bright red trousers, with a matching bow tie and shirt. Looking back, I was asking for it."

He was trained at the Royal College of Music, plays piano like an angel, and writes and produces all his own songs. In an era of mass-market bubblegum pop, the boy is like a sore thumb.

He's also delightfully eccentric, with a bizarre transatlantic accent, a polysexual persona and an unconventional outlook on life. He's cocky and opinionated, despite having struggled for almost five years for this break.

"Should I bend over? Should I look older just to be put on the shelf?" he asks in a dig at those who initially rejected him.

"Serious" critics still loathe him, but the boy's having the last laugh now.