Michael Buble and I are lying on his bed. Buble likes beds. He often cosies up with his grandparents and sings to them when they're all lounging on one.
When we lie down he cuddles a pillow in front of him. I have seen fat people do this. He's not fat. He is in part insecure and the rest of him is superbly relaxed.
He orders caviar and a hot dog for his lunch. "This says everything about me."
He means it defines the extremes in his character.
His grandfather is Italian and it is this heritage that encourages him to express passion without middle ground. He sings old standards, yet young people love him, which has made him difficult to categorise.
He is now 36, with over 30 million album sales to date, making him the most successful male vocalist in the world. Three years ago there was a change in his career. He became proof that it was hip to be square, crooning those old tunes he couldn't be cooler.
The catalyst for this was extreme pain. Everything changed because his relationship with his former fiancee, Oscar-nominated Devil Wears Prada actress Emily Blunt, fell apart. He blamed himself and went into therapy. The last time we met he was giddy with love for Blunt and had just written the song Everything for her. "God. Everything has changed since then. I am not in love with Emily any more. It would be weird for me to be in touch with her and her family. I have my own family and my own in-laws and my beautiful wife."
He married Argentinian model and actress Luisana Lopilato earlier this year. "When we met, nearly three years ago, I was doing a show in Buenos Aires and still hurting with the whole ex thing. I was with my grandfather and Uncle Butch and we'd gone to get my car after the show and I saw her across the way. I said, ‘That's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.'"
But the police escorted Buble's car back to his hotel and he had no chance to meet her.
He tells his grandfather, Mitch, everything and Mitch has been everything to him. When he was a boy he would sing the evergreens the old man liked. Mitch had absolute faith in him. He offered to provide his plumbing services free if a club would give his grandson a chance.
Buble took those chances and worked relentlessly for years before the first signs of success. His album Call Me Irresponsible and the follow-up Crazy Love were both Number One and platinum sellers.
‘A fraud'
Despite all of this success he felt "a complete fraud".
Today he puts it a different way. He just didn't like himself very much, and it took the break-up with Blunt to get him to seek help.
"It ended through both of us being young and naive and making silly mistakes," he says. "It was about me looking in the mirror and saying ‘Michael, wake up.' I never lived in the moment, not ever. It was out of insecurity and me worrying what would happen. I thought, ‘You know, you could like yourself more.' I'm not embarrassed to say this. I f****d up.
"I knew if I didn't change I would never be happy or content in my own skin with who I was. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the greatest thing that ever happened to me."
He bought books on how to be happy, readdressed his eating, which was either no carbs or spaghetti carbonara every day.
He started going to the gym and stopped comfort eating so that he feels comfortable in his sharp suits.
"Nowadays I try to eat healthily and work out every day. I like doing weights. I was having a hard time and it made me feel better. But speaking of what's changed, I'm not the same guy. My wife is very conservative, so a lot of things I did I don't do now. I'm quite disciplined.
"When I'm on tour I can't be smoking, drinking and partying every night. I don't recuperate like I used to."
It was around a year after the break-up with Blunt that he first saw Luisana. "I was wrapped up in melancholy because I thought I would never see her again. Then there was a party at my hotel. I was drinking a lot more at the time because that's how I was dealing with things and the head of the record company said that he would like me to meet the country's most famous actor and actress and in Luisana walked. But she was with this Brad Pitt-lookalike. I thought this was the worst ever: the girl of my dreams is with her boyfriend.
"She didn't speak English but he did, so we had a long conversation. By the time I had my third ... I was slurring my words telling him they made such a good couple. And then he said, ‘We are not a couple.' The girl was texting her mother saying, ‘I've met Michael Buble and he is gay.'
"So then I started to talk to her and asked if I could spend time with her. She said she had just come out of a relationship and was not ready to get into one. I said, ‘You're my wife, you just don't know it yet. I'm going to come back and marry you.'
"We e-mailed each other for months. When I finally met her family, I told her that they were exactly the same as mine. She just gave me a look. Finally, she got it."
His wife lives mostly in their house in Argentina for her work.
Working on himself
He presents a very warm but passionate relationship with his wife. "Before when I was going out a lot I just wanted to escape my reality, whereas now I like it.
"It wasn't her that changed this. It was the break-up with the ex. I'd worked on myself and when I met Lou I felt worthy of love. It's hard to feel that when you are insecure. You think, ‘Why are they with me?' We all sit there, thinking, ‘You're going to fail, he or she is going to leave you.' What I didn't know was I had the power not to listen to that. I can't change what I did and I have no control over what is going to happen, only how I handle it, and it's made me a better husband and a better family man.
"On stage it's made me ten times better. I don't try to be Mr Cool or Mr Suave Guy. Just myself."
He's always seemed himself on stage to me. "Then I tricked you. I was trying to play the part of someone I thought was cooler. It's not that I'm content now. In fact I'm far more scared of failure than I ever was. You're only as good as your last song. You've got to stay hungry."
How hard is it keeping a relationship going when he's on the move so much? "My wife rarely travels with me. She loves working as much as I do. She's about to make a couple of movies, and that's cool for me. Talking over the internet really helps. I'll finish a show, come to my hotel room and I'll say to her on iChat ‘Do you want to watch a movie?' And we'll rent a movie together. I'll get a bowl of popcorn and sit in bed and we'll play the movie at exactly the same time. She can see me and I can see her.
"At the end she might say ‘OK, mi amore, I'm going to sleep,' and we keep iChat on all night as we sleep. It keeps me connected in a very virtual way.
"If I'm away I miss her like crazy."
He shows me a picture of Mitch who is handsome and looks like his much older twin. "He's my best buddy. Last night for two hours I lay in bed with my grandpa and grandma and my mum and I was taking singing requests. I can never be with them enough. That's why I'm so looking forward to Christmas with them in Vancouver. We put Ave Maria on my new album for grandpa."
Buble insists the album is not just another Christmas record. "It's the most important record I've ever done. Some people are just Christmas people. My mother used to play White Christmas from early October through to December 25. I couldn't get enough of it.
"This Christmas I'll give my wife a thousand little things. She's 24, but like 12. Actually in some ways she's like 50. More mature than me, but she likes me to buy her make-up and wrap it individually."
Has his success surprised him? "No. It surprised me it took this long. I had such a good time connecting to an audience, I was just throwing a party. How could people not want to come?"
‘Someone always gets hurt'
A couple of days later he wants to talk about who else have been my interviewees. He perks up when we talk about Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson and how their open relationship became messy.
"I've been in open relationships. I liked them, but they don't work. Someone always gets hurt. I got hurt and I've done hurting. They are like communism; in theory a good thing, but when in place everything falls apart.
"Love has to be unbalanced. It's the game. The man has to love the woman more so he's always chasing. My wife is playing it right. I'm like a stupid dog chasing after her car.
"If you really love somebody, why would you want them to be with somebody else? For me it would be weird to feel another woman's lips.
"My wife is always making these movies where she's kissing some good-looking guy. I ask her what it feels like. She says there's 50 people watching on set and it's not romantic. But I don't know the feeling of kissing without it being romantic."
He says he has never felt this way about another woman. "I'm not proud of how I've acted. I was reckless with other people's hearts. I kept doing it and then I tried to learn from it."
They are thinking of starting a family. "We're planning next Christmas. My wife is such a planner."
With thoughts of birth come thoughts of death. "It's been a tough year for my grandpa. My Uncle Butch passed away. He was a vibrant guy. He and grandpa came on every tour."
The first time Buble ever sang was when he heard Bing Crosby's White Christmas. And that's why his Christmas album is the most important one he's ever done. It's not just Ave Maria that's for his grandpa, it's everything.
When we lie down he cuddles a pillow in front of him. I have seen fat people do this. He's not fat. He is in part insecure and the rest of him is superbly relaxed.
He orders caviar and a hot dog for his lunch. "This says everything about me."
He means it defines the extremes in his character.
His grandfather is Italian and it is this heritage that encourages him to express passion without middle ground. He sings old standards, yet young people love him, which has made him difficult to categorise.
He is now 36, with over 30 million album sales to date, making him the most successful male vocalist in the world. Three years ago there was a change in his career. He became proof that it was hip to be square, crooning those old tunes he couldn't be cooler.
The catalyst for this was extreme pain. Everything changed because his relationship with his former fiancee, Oscar-nominated Devil Wears Prada actress Emily Blunt, fell apart. He blamed himself and went into therapy. The last time we met he was giddy with love for Blunt and had just written the song Everything for her. "God. Everything has changed since then. I am not in love with Emily any more. It would be weird for me to be in touch with her and her family. I have my own family and my own in-laws and my beautiful wife."
He married Argentinian model and actress Luisana Lopilato earlier this year. "When we met, nearly three years ago, I was doing a show in Buenos Aires and still hurting with the whole ex thing. I was with my grandfather and Uncle Butch and we'd gone to get my car after the show and I saw her across the way. I said, ‘That's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.'"
But the police escorted Buble's car back to his hotel and he had no chance to meet her.
He tells his grandfather, Mitch, everything and Mitch has been everything to him. When he was a boy he would sing the evergreens the old man liked. Mitch had absolute faith in him. He offered to provide his plumbing services free if a club would give his grandson a chance.
Buble took those chances and worked relentlessly for years before the first signs of success. His album Call Me Irresponsible and the follow-up Crazy Love were both Number One and platinum sellers.
‘A fraud'
Despite all of this success he felt "a complete fraud".
Today he puts it a different way. He just didn't like himself very much, and it took the break-up with Blunt to get him to seek help.
"It ended through both of us being young and naive and making silly mistakes," he says. "It was about me looking in the mirror and saying ‘Michael, wake up.' I never lived in the moment, not ever. It was out of insecurity and me worrying what would happen. I thought, ‘You know, you could like yourself more.' I'm not embarrassed to say this. I f****d up.
"I knew if I didn't change I would never be happy or content in my own skin with who I was. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the greatest thing that ever happened to me."
He bought books on how to be happy, readdressed his eating, which was either no carbs or spaghetti carbonara every day.
He started going to the gym and stopped comfort eating so that he feels comfortable in his sharp suits.
"Nowadays I try to eat healthily and work out every day. I like doing weights. I was having a hard time and it made me feel better. But speaking of what's changed, I'm not the same guy. My wife is very conservative, so a lot of things I did I don't do now. I'm quite disciplined.
"When I'm on tour I can't be smoking, drinking and partying every night. I don't recuperate like I used to."
It was around a year after the break-up with Blunt that he first saw Luisana. "I was wrapped up in melancholy because I thought I would never see her again. Then there was a party at my hotel. I was drinking a lot more at the time because that's how I was dealing with things and the head of the record company said that he would like me to meet the country's most famous actor and actress and in Luisana walked. But she was with this Brad Pitt-lookalike. I thought this was the worst ever: the girl of my dreams is with her boyfriend.
"She didn't speak English but he did, so we had a long conversation. By the time I had my third ... I was slurring my words telling him they made such a good couple. And then he said, ‘We are not a couple.' The girl was texting her mother saying, ‘I've met Michael Buble and he is gay.'
"So then I started to talk to her and asked if I could spend time with her. She said she had just come out of a relationship and was not ready to get into one. I said, ‘You're my wife, you just don't know it yet. I'm going to come back and marry you.'
"We e-mailed each other for months. When I finally met her family, I told her that they were exactly the same as mine. She just gave me a look. Finally, she got it."
His wife lives mostly in their house in Argentina for her work.
Working on himself
He presents a very warm but passionate relationship with his wife. "Before when I was going out a lot I just wanted to escape my reality, whereas now I like it.
"It wasn't her that changed this. It was the break-up with the ex. I'd worked on myself and when I met Lou I felt worthy of love. It's hard to feel that when you are insecure. You think, ‘Why are they with me?' We all sit there, thinking, ‘You're going to fail, he or she is going to leave you.' What I didn't know was I had the power not to listen to that. I can't change what I did and I have no control over what is going to happen, only how I handle it, and it's made me a better husband and a better family man.
"On stage it's made me ten times better. I don't try to be Mr Cool or Mr Suave Guy. Just myself."
He's always seemed himself on stage to me. "Then I tricked you. I was trying to play the part of someone I thought was cooler. It's not that I'm content now. In fact I'm far more scared of failure than I ever was. You're only as good as your last song. You've got to stay hungry."
How hard is it keeping a relationship going when he's on the move so much? "My wife rarely travels with me. She loves working as much as I do. She's about to make a couple of movies, and that's cool for me. Talking over the internet really helps. I'll finish a show, come to my hotel room and I'll say to her on iChat ‘Do you want to watch a movie?' And we'll rent a movie together. I'll get a bowl of popcorn and sit in bed and we'll play the movie at exactly the same time. She can see me and I can see her.
"At the end she might say ‘OK, mi amore, I'm going to sleep,' and we keep iChat on all night as we sleep. It keeps me connected in a very virtual way.
"If I'm away I miss her like crazy."
He shows me a picture of Mitch who is handsome and looks like his much older twin. "He's my best buddy. Last night for two hours I lay in bed with my grandpa and grandma and my mum and I was taking singing requests. I can never be with them enough. That's why I'm so looking forward to Christmas with them in Vancouver. We put Ave Maria on my new album for grandpa."
Buble insists the album is not just another Christmas record. "It's the most important record I've ever done. Some people are just Christmas people. My mother used to play White Christmas from early October through to December 25. I couldn't get enough of it.
"This Christmas I'll give my wife a thousand little things. She's 24, but like 12. Actually in some ways she's like 50. More mature than me, but she likes me to buy her make-up and wrap it individually."
Has his success surprised him? "No. It surprised me it took this long. I had such a good time connecting to an audience, I was just throwing a party. How could people not want to come?"
‘Someone always gets hurt'
A couple of days later he wants to talk about who else have been my interviewees. He perks up when we talk about Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson and how their open relationship became messy.
"I've been in open relationships. I liked them, but they don't work. Someone always gets hurt. I got hurt and I've done hurting. They are like communism; in theory a good thing, but when in place everything falls apart.
"Love has to be unbalanced. It's the game. The man has to love the woman more so he's always chasing. My wife is playing it right. I'm like a stupid dog chasing after her car.
"If you really love somebody, why would you want them to be with somebody else? For me it would be weird to feel another woman's lips.
"My wife is always making these movies where she's kissing some good-looking guy. I ask her what it feels like. She says there's 50 people watching on set and it's not romantic. But I don't know the feeling of kissing without it being romantic."
He says he has never felt this way about another woman. "I'm not proud of how I've acted. I was reckless with other people's hearts. I kept doing it and then I tried to learn from it."
They are thinking of starting a family. "We're planning next Christmas. My wife is such a planner."
With thoughts of birth come thoughts of death. "It's been a tough year for my grandpa. My Uncle Butch passed away. He was a vibrant guy. He and grandpa came on every tour."
The first time Buble ever sang was when he heard Bing Crosby's White Christmas. And that's why his Christmas album is the most important one he's ever done. It's not just Ave Maria that's for his grandpa, it's everything.
