Made In Chelsea star and former Oxford schoolboy Andy Jordan is all about the music. Tim Hughes reports

With successful careers as a musician and a broker, not to mention a starring role in a top reality TV show, you might think Andy Jordan has it all.

But no. The Made In Chelsea star and former Oxford lad has another ambition – to be the next David Attenborough.

“I want to travel the world doing what David does,” he says, talking from his home in West London.

“I’d also love to be the next Michael Palin. And he gets to wear great hats too. I’ve always been interested in geography and I am a pretty good geographer!”

All of which explains why when the singer-songwriter and former St Edward’s schoolboy, came to finding a name for his debut EP, he settled on his first passion: Geography.

No one was more amused than Andy’s former geography master and cricket coach at ‘Teddies’, Richard Howitt.

“He thought it was hilarious,” he laughs. “He’s getting married this year and he asked me to play at his wedding. The music’s got nothing to do with geography, of course.”

Andy, 25, is cheerful and chatty coming across in real life as he does on the E4 ‘structured-reality’ show which made his name – which should be no surprise at all, given his insistence that ‘MIC’ is “all real”, Since hitting our screens three years ago, MIC has flown, becoming a cultural phenomenon, spawning a host of imitators and making stars of its cast of privileged, and good looking, characters.

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The concept, to anyone who has managed to miss the show, is part fly-on-the-wall documentary and part soap. Where the ‘reality’ ends and the ‘structure’ begins remains a mystery, and Andy, who went through a very public relationship break-up on the show, is not giving much away, other than to insist it is not scripted. “That’s the million dollar question,” he laughs. That’s the secret of the series so I can’t give away exactly how we do it, but I can say it’s more real than constructed. There’s never been a script; what you see is what you get.”

It wasn’t Teddies’ famous music department which inspired Andy to dabble in song, but his time spent on the road in his gap year. “My best mate Chris Forsyth is a wizard guitarist and we bought a guitar in Mexico for 20 quid.

“When we got back, he gave it to me to teach myself on. I went to university and started to play.”

He played his first gig on the show. “It was in a bar in North London and was a weird one,” he recalls. “I wasn’t that nervous at first as there were only 50 people, but then I realised it was going out to millions of people across the UK and it was quite scary. It got a really good reaction though, even though the sound quality was bad.”

On Saturday he plays a more intimate, but sold-out, show at the O2 Academy Oxford.

“I’ve got a lot of influences,” he says. “Some have a reggae inspiration and others are more straight guitar and singing. Some are soulful while others are upbeat and poppy. I’ve never been one to let myself be tied to one thing.”

And he is looking forward to getting back to his former stomping ground. “I really loved the time I had in Oxford,” he says warmly. “I went to school there, and my family lived nearby, on the Woodstock Road. It was a fantastic experience. I managed to get a Douglas Bader Scholarship – and eventually they let all my brothers and sisters in too.”

While he admits the bulk of the audience will be MIC fans, he insists he is “turning the corner” and attracting people who love his music rather than just the show.

And does he expect to be mobbed on the Cowley Road? “Yeah!” he laughs. “It’s a weird thing. On the last tour there were girls waiting outside the tour bus in minus-five degree temperatures for hours, It’s crazy. That’s not the reaction you get from Made In Chelsea alone. It’s only music that makes people get that crazy!”

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Andy Jordan plays the O2 Academy Oxford on Saturday. Tickets have sold out.
Geography is out on June 22.