MAX McElligott is feeling pleased with himself. The musician and dog lover, better known by his stage name Wolf Gang, is today grinning like a Cheshire cat… the one that got the cream.

“I’ve spent the morning looking at a succession of beautiful females,” he says, smugly, taking time out from casting models to appear in his new video.

“There’s a scene of girls looking out to sea on a beach, so I have to do this.”

I hate him already! Or, I would were he not so disarmingly modest. This softly spoken Scotsman is not just winning over fans with his towering pop; it’s impossible not to be impressed by his bloke-next-door charm, which belies the creative genius behind the music. For here is a guy who knows his instruments – indeed, there aren’t many he can’t get a tune out of.

Enthused as a boy by visits to classical concerts with his violinist mother, he marvelled at the symphonies he heard, and decided to learn every instrument in the orchestra.

Starting with the piano, he moved on to the drums – playing for six years in a school band.

Since then he has mastered the guitar, bass, keyboards, glockenspiel and assorted other instruments, which clutter his home.

“I write all my songs myself,” he says, “And I record on my own with my own drums and bass. I get four other guys on stage though. They are session musicians but play amazingly well and love it – and not just because they are being paid!”

He admits to being a loner, if a bit of an exhibitionist, at heart, though. “I’m a performer,” he says. “Most solo artists are. Because I write it myself I have a strong idea about how it should be. Though on stage we all chip in to make it sound good.”

So is he a musical tyrant or more democratic leader? “WelI, I do like to keep creative control, so I suppose I am a benevolent dictator! I give with one hand and take away with the other, but there’s no real power struggle.”

But, he admits, the single life – musically – suits him just fine. “Everyone has experiences of falling out and breaking up, but I don’t want any of that rubbish.”

He is talking from Soho, just down the road from his London flat.

“I am from Scotland, but have lived all over,” he says. “Including America, where my dad worked. I came down to London to do a degree at the LSE three years ago but dropped out. I was supposed to be studying social anthro-pology.

“It was only a few months away from my finals and although I’d been playing songs I didn’t have any serious intentions, and was not thinking about music as a career.”

Releasing music online, however, he was soon deluged with interest.

“My tutor asked me if I wanted to be an anthropologist or a musician?’ and said: ‘Do the music, man!’” So I decided to give it a go, and went away to write.”

He hid behind the name Wolf Gang on the advise of his sister.

“I love wolves,” he says. “I’d like to have one, and I’ve always grown up thinking I’m wild and wolf-ish. I also love classical music, so the name is a nod to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. “ He recorded his debut album Suego Faults with producer Dave Fridmann, of Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev and MGMT fame, at the Tarbox Studios, deep in the woods of upstate New York.

With Wolf Gang poised to conquer the world, what is he most proud of so far?

“Well I’m happy that I managed to co-produce my debut album. But I’m also really please to have made some amazing trips.”

Tomorrow he plays the Oxford O2 Academy, the latest stop on a summer tour.

“I love Oxford,” he says.

“And I am a social anthropologist, remember… and you have the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is fantastic. The shrunken heads are great… I love all that.”

But first he has the pressing matter of picking a model for his video shoot.

“I just need to find one who can act, and not just look beautiful,” he laughs.

“I’ve got the best job in the world!”