Peter Andre talks to Steve Pratt about being asked to create a song for animated movie Mr Peabody and Sherman and how the project reminds him of fatherhood and family life

RESPONDING to a question about his future work, Peter Andre says: “We’ve got the calendar again this year, a new range of perfume coming out, the hair care products, Sixty Minute Makeover, another project we’re talking about with ITV… “…and or Channel 5,” he adds, after prompting from one of his team. “And the tour and the album. A lot to cram into the year and, of course, amongst that I’ve got to be dad.”

That list doesn’t include the reason we’re talking – in a small side room in a London restaurant – today. His new song, Kid, is the official track for Dreamworks’ animated movie Mr Peabody & Sherman, about a genius dog and his adopted human son.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Children are very much on his mind because his fiancee, former medical student, Emily Mac- Donagh gave birth to their daughter a month ago. She was finally named as Amelia this week. I congratulate Andre on becoming a father again (he has Junior, eight, and Princess Tiaami, six, from his marriage to Katie Price).

“Thank you,” he says. “Amelia. How nice it is to have a name. Even now I go, ‘Yes, the baby’ and then go, ‘No. no, her name’s Amelia’.”

How’s he coping with bringing up baby?

“Look, I’m not sleeping, but then it’s an exciting time and you do find the energy. So it just goes to show you probably don’t need as much sleep as you think you do,” he says.

“It’s an incredible January. First of all, Amelia was born three weeks early. There’s been the engagement and this incredible opportunity with Dreamworks all in the same month.

“What an incredible start to the year compared to last January, after I lost my brother in December. It couldn’t have come from a worst year to come to this. Although all that is still very raw, I’ve had these incredible things happen and had Dreamworks, who could have chosen anyone, ask me to be involved.”

The film is very much a father and son story, even if dad is a dog and the boy is human. The makers asked Andre to see the film before coming up with a song and he connected with it immediately.

“I went wow, that’s me and Junior. The only difference is that the dog’s a genius. Apart from that, the jokes, the love, the bond, the friendship, the mischievousness of the son all mirrored us,” he says.

It helps, I suppose, that he liked the movie and the educational aspect as the pair time travel meeting Leonardo Da Vinci, King Tut and Marie Antoinette along the way.

He’s a big fan of time travel. Back To The Future is one of his favourite movies. His eyes light up when I tell him it’s being turned into a stage musical. Who’s playing Marty? he asks, then adds “I’d love to do something like that, but even if I wanted to we haven’t got the time.

“I was offered Fonzie in Happy Days, which I would have loved. That’s all my era. They were very kind, but it’s a huge commitment and we just couldn’t do it.”

He refers to “we” several times. That’s his management team. He pays tribute to them, saying he couldn’t do it without them.

He’s not afraid of hard work. “I never thought I’d say in my life there’s not enough hours in the day, and when Emily was pregnant, part of me was, ‘I don’t know if I want to keep doing loads of work – come on, slow down’. Now I have a new zest for life and I just want to work harder now.” Which prompts the question: doing what? Andre seems to have a finger in many pies. Music is his first love – writing, performing, touring – but he also loves TV, notably presenting Sixty Minute Makeover for ITV.

“That’s such a great job for me because I get to go into other people’s reality instead of my own, which is fantastic. You walk into their house instead of the cameras coming into yours.” His popular reality show, on ITV, has exposed most aspects of his life. The series has ended for now, and it will be a couple of years before “we bring it back”.

Despite that massive public exposure, Andre is one of the few performers who manage to get the right balance between private and public life. “We are very much the same on and off camera,” he says.

“It could have easily have been a Big Brother situation where they just set up cameras in the house because we are the same – always goofing around. I’m a strict parent, I may not have shown a lot of the strictness on camera because you can’t pick and choose when your kids are going to be disciplined. But I am strict in the sense that I lay the rules down like my parents did. I’m also very fair and very open and do a lot more fun things.”

He was born in England, with the family moving to Australia when he was six. His first memory – “it’s quite morbid” – is the day Elvis Presley died. “I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was four years old and tapping the TV screen and dad kept telling me to move out of the way because this guy Elvis had died.

“I remember it vividly and then, two years later, we moved to Australia. I thought we were just going on this big beach holiday. I loved growing up in Australia.”

He’s had setbacks in his career, of course, and is surprised by how well it’s worked out.

“I am so grateful. I pinch myself all the time and think, ‘Wow’. I get humbled by it, instead of it ever making me cocky. It does the complete opposite to me, makes me think, ‘Jeez, you’re so lucky, you’d better appreciate it’.”

Being older makes him appreciate success more than when he was young, I suggest. “I’m not that old,” he protests goodheartedly. (for the record, he’s 40).

“But you appreciate it, you wouldn’t believe how much. I’m forever grateful for the support.

When you are younger you say to people, If it wasn’t for the fans I’d be nothing’. But you don’t really realise that until you get older.”

  • Peter Andre’s new song Kid is the UK’s official track for the new DreamWorks Animation Mr Peabody & Sherman (U), which is now showing in cinemas