Jamie Cullum hasn't visited the North-East yet, but he's about to rectify the situation. The jazz star tells Viv Hardwick how much his music means to him.

Jazz star Jamie Cullum refuses to be overawed by being dubbed the £1m man of international music. In fact, he claims he's hardly seen a penny of Universal's contract cash which turned his album Twentysomething into a worldwide chart hit last year and saw him invited to play for everyone from the Queen to the elite of Hollywood.

The 25-year-old, who has chosen Durham County Cricket Club's Riverside ground for his outdoor debut, says he isn't fazed at the vast sums being invested in his career.

"The £1m deal means nothing," he says. "I've earned virtually no money from being signed to Universal and selling 2.5 million records. The Universal Music Company has presented me with no physical money so it doesn't haunt me. The only thing I want to achieve is to make another record for those who enjoyed the last one, and to move my music along and evolve it. That's the thing I really care about, so £1m doesn't mean anything.

"I don't know where it goes because it doesn't cost a lot of money making records. I think it goes into promotion, or that's what they say, anyway. But money remains my smallest motivation for making music. Universal has sufficiently raised my profile by allowing me to play concerts, which is my favourite thing anyway."

Currently, Cullum is working frantically on his third album and is keen to complete the project within the next few days.

"I feel great about it because I work fast. A lot of people will spend a year making an album -we've been three weeks and it'll be finished soon. So it means the music is still fresh and exciting. I've been pre-producing the music and writing it for ages but actually sitting down and recording in a studio is just frantic," says Cullum, who reckons the release will be 90 per cent his own composition.

"You'll see it will link up with the last album but the elusive title isn't quite with me at the moment. Although I've got a couple of ideas, I'll have to keep shtum about them."

The release date is the end of August/early September. "That is the part I know and care little about because in June I'm off on tour and it's in the hands of other people," says Cullum.

Does he have an audience in mind when he's composing? "Yeah, it sounds selfish but it's me, I guess. The thing is I'm someone who is as likely to listen to Arcade Fire, The Doves, Thelonious Monk, Frank Sinatra and JayZee, so I like to make music which appeals to my eclectic taste and is artistically interesting, a bit daring and a bit funny and stupid."

So does he enjoy listening to his own CDs? "You work so hard on a record and listen to it so much in the process that once it's actually out and in the stores, you don't immediately sit down and listen to it again."

His highly-anticipated visit to the North-East, where hopes are high of a dry spell, will see thousands pack in to watch this rising star of international jazz. How easy is it for him to switch from intimate club performer to big outdoor stage showman?

Cullum says: "I think it's easy as long as you keep your mind on where you come from. We've got a week booked in a small club in August and as much as we've got big venue stuff, you've got to learn to approach both things with the same enthusiasm and attention to detail.

"There's always drama at my shows, whether it's just two people or 5,000. There's always some falling over and injuring myself having fun at my shows because I'm always leaping about and doing insane things. I'm surprised someone doesn't come up to me in a white coat."

He admits that the leaping around on stage and crazy piano playing style feed from the adrenaline of his music. "Bloody hell, if I tried to work that out, I'd go mad. I always give blood for my music, like a Kiss or Alice Cooper concert," he laughs.

Cullum says he was aware he'd never played in the North-East before and was anxious to include the County Durham date in his tour.

"I knew I hadn't played up in the North-East, so it's one of only three English dates I'm doing before the new album comes out. I don't know exactly what I'm going to play yet and probably won't know until about half an hour before the concert. It will be a mixture of stuff from Twentysomething and even some songs I've just composed," he says.

Self-taught pianist Cullum was originally destined for the life of a rock band musician and recalls spending a lot of time in the back of a white transit van with ten cans of beer for company. A meeting four years ago with jazz bass player Geoff Gascoyne at a Bracknell summer school changed the course of his career and soon the two were recording with jazz drummer Sebastiaan De Krom.

Cullum says: "I've done that rock band thing and it's not dissimilar to what I'm doing now. The lifestyle is the same. Anyone who thinks it's any tamer is very wrong."

He's prepared to chat about anything except two subjects: his girlfriend, who he doesn't want named and "is as far away from my career as possible", and hit single Everlasting Love, from the second Bridget Jones movie. The remake of the Sixties hit hasn't met with total approval and Cullum will only say: "The way it came about was pretty obscure, but that's another story for another time."

The antipathy to his growing success from the jazz establishment does produce a response, though. "Before I'd sold any records and I was playing small clubs I had universal acceptance and suddenly, they started defecting a little bit when I became successful. So I'm very curious about all that - but I just get on with my music. Critics will always exist so don't believe the good and don't believe the bad," he replies

Cullum is fairly dismissive about any attempt to portray him as a babe magnet. "I'll let you know if it happens. When you're on stage maybe they feel that way, but as soon as you're off stage and you meet them it's 'oh you're normal, oh okay, goodbye'."

And the future? "I honestly think that if you can say 'I've made it' you're on the way down."

* Jamie Cullum, Durham County Cricket Club, July 29. Tickets: 0871 2200 260 or Seetickets.com