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Three months ago Elvis Costello was a computer operator. Then he became an overnight success as a rock star and is heralded as perhaps the ultimate anti-hero.
When Costello made his third London appearance last weekend the police arrested eight people as they dispersed 700 fans unable to get in.
His first album, released early this month, sold more than 10,000 copies in the first three days.
Now Costello, bizarre in the pop world by reason of his utter ordinariness, looks like becoming the first solo star to emerge from the new wave in rock music.
"If people don't take me seriously then there must be something wrong with their ears," he remarked succinctly when asked whether his name might suggest a figure of fun. "I'm not joking in what I do, but I'm not serious, in the sense that I'm so serious I'm going to cry.
"The name is my name. It's a slap in the face for all that stupid self-seriousness that goes around."
Britain's Elvis clearly offers something different from the style provided by the corpulent prototype on the other side of the Atlantic.
A slight figure with a sallow complexion and heavy-rimmed glasses, Costello lives with his wife near Hounslow and specialises in sour paeans of guilt and rejection.
His clothes are purely functional, coming together at a point where the Army surplus store meets the inadequate office clerk. The result is somehow entirely in keeping with the later seventies style of brain-damaged desperado. At least one music paper has already described him as a "now" person for "now" people.
"Fashions" are stupid, says Elvis. "If people start dressing like me I only hope they feel good in the clothes.
"I don't care if they wear them. What they do in their own homes is their business. These clothes I'm wearing are really the only ones I have."
In terms of material, many of Costello's songs are sinister in the extreme, with death and destruction just around the corner.
A recent single entitled "Alison" sounds like straight romance until a more careful examination of the lyrics reveals that it is almost an intention to kill, and the line "My aim is true," takes on a new meaning.
According to the singer, most of the inspiration comes from the feeling that Britain exists at present in the atmosphere of a permanent Sunday afternoon.
"I only want to sing about things that are a matter of life and death, not in a super-melodramatic way, but from the point of view everything is so Sunday, so mediocre, in Britain that it is in itself a matter of life and death," he says.
"There's no killing out on the streets." He sounded disappointed. "You couldn't write West Side Story in New Malden. It's not possible.
"There's this funny kind of situation right now. People live and die and have all these big dramas all of their own, but it's always with the curtains drawn and the television on.
"I'm not interested in self-pity. I'm not trying to come out like some martyr. That's Dory Previn's territory — suffer along with me in harmony.
"The one thing I'm particularly interested in is this Sunday thing in Britain. The fact that it's very boring doesn't make it any less important, because you still have to lead your life."
At present Costello says he is 22 years old, but looks 10 years older. His past is obscure, and he means to keep it that way.
"It's very easy to pin me down as the frustrated computer operator sitting there seething in his office not being able to get out," he told me. "That's a very romantic image, but it wasn't really like that.
"It was a job that I got paid for which allowed me time to write and wasn't particularly unpleasant.
"To me the past is just boring. I'm here now in 1977 and that's provided plenty of interest in itself, in my opinion.
"I don't think the sudden interest is unjustified. I think my album is a good record, so there's every reason people should want to know about it."
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