With a £1million record deal, Scottish classical singer Nicky Spence has the world at his size 12 feet.

But the tenor believes it would have been very different had he not won his battle with the bulge.

"When I was 16 I weighed 25 stone," confesses the 24-year-old.

"I convinced myself that being big didn't matter, that I could do anything whatever size I was. But I was wrong."

Nicky's talent for singing was spotted by a music teacher at school. He won the Dumfries and Galloway Young Musician of the Year Award aged 14 and was steered towards the Guildhall School of Music in London.

In a real-life version of the Billy Elliot story, neighbours and friends helped raise funds to ensure he had the fare to travel south for the audition.

Nicky got a place on the course - and was picked out as a huge talent. Unfortunately he was too big.

"Pavarotti was my role model at the time," he explains. "I felt that because Pavarotti was fat, I could be a successful singer and fat also.

"But things were changing in classical music.

"I grew to realise that if I was up for a role opposite another singer who wasn't quite as good but looked like Brad Pitt, then he'd get the job instead of me.

"I was good enough to sing leading man roles, but directors were worried whether I was going to kiss the leading lady or eat her."

Nicky, known for singing Burns songs as well as opera, speaks frankly about his weight problem in a programme for Channel 4's current affairs series The Insider.

And he argues that Britain is facing a hidden epidemic of heavy teenage boys who eat too much and exercise too little.

"Never mind worrying about size zero models, the big problem in Britain is fatty teenaged boys," says Nicky.

"Boys don't like to talk about their weight or diet. As a result it is going almost unnoticed. People have to sit up and take notice of this otherwise in the future we will pay the price."

Nicky's own story is enough to get any teenage boy off the junk food and into the gym.

He was 12 when he got his first job peeling potatoes in Fusi's chip shop in his home village of Thornhill, Dumfriesshire.

"My dad had left home when I was eight, that was the big emotional trauma of our life," Nicky explains.

Although he is now on friendly terms with his dad, Michael, 55, the fact the family broke up had a lasting impact.

"We didn't have much money. Mum worked and she wanted my sister and I to know the value of money, so we got jobs," he explains.

"I worked in the chippie and some weeks I'd eat so much I'd owe them money."

Nicky would spend his wages on anything from chips to sweets to Fusi's speciality - deep-fried Mars bars.

"I was eating four a week at one point," he recalls. "And at Easter we'd eat deep-fried cream eggs.

"I was already a chunky kid - some families are more prone to being fat and we were one of them.

"But now being the man of the house, I got this mindset that I should be big. I worked in the chip shop and later a Chinese takeaway and just kept putting on weight.

"I developed this personality that it was fine to be fat - I was on a vicious cycle of being overweight.

"But I was eating for comfort. Not always unhealthily - I had some idea about nutrition, I remember we had salads - but I'd just eat an awful lot all the time."

His own turning point came at age 20 when a Guildhall teacher confronted him about his weight.

"This big German voice coach came up to me and said, 'Vot are you going to do about your veight?' No one had said that to me before because I was so full of confidence and enthusiasm, and I felt I could do everything whatever my size.

"So this teacher took the wind out of my sails and I started to look at why I was big in the first place and started making changes."

For the next year, Nicky made a concerted effort to lose weight.

"London is very different to a place like Thornhill, there's a lot more choice and it's much easier to get different kinds of food and stay disciplined about what you eat.

"So I started taking care over my diet, gradually cutting down on my portions. I exercised a lot more too - running up the stairs, to the underground, that sort of thing.

"It turned out to be quite easy. The weight started falling off me. My girlfriend was living in Glasgow and every couple of months I'd go up and see her and I'd be two stones lighter. She used to joke that I was fading away."

Within a year, and with the help of Weight Watchers, Nicky had reduced his weight to his current 15 stone. It transformed his career and life.

"Health-wise I now feel there is nothing holding me back," he says. "I used to sweat a lot, now I don't. And I can do much more - I was kayaking last week on holiday.

"Also, once I had lost the weight people's attitude to me changed. I got my recording contract with Universal not long after.

"I also stopped defining myself as the big fat guy - though I felt a bit vulnerable because people started seeing me differently. It was novel, for instance, to be considered a sexual predator."

Nicky - who now lives with his girlfriend Rhona McKail - agreed to revisit his youth for Channel 4 in the hope his story would help boys with similar problems take a good look at themselves.

"Food is so cheap now anyone can spend a fiver and buy loads of rubbish," Nicky says.

"Obesity is a working class problem and seems to be getting worse. Kids don't get enough exercise - there's not as much sport at school as there should be.

"For the programme, we went to Dumfries to see if we could find boys to take their body mass index. I was worried we wouldn't find enough fatties but they seemed to come out of the woodwork.

"Our awareness of people being overweight has been dimmed because so many more people are now heavier than they should be."

Nicky was saddened by some teens' reaction to their weight.

"We told these boys, 'You're morbidly obese, what do you think of that?' They just shrugged it off. They are confident, but don't seem to know or care about the health risks. Perhaps they need more education."

What is crucial, Nicky believes, is that families are involved together when it comes to tackling a teenager's obesity issue.

n the programme his mum, Annabel, 55, admits she was at fault for him putting on weight.

"I remember the health advice I'd get at school was useless - it was just someone saying 'You are overweight'," says Nicky.

"No one tried to help you understand why or explain why you should change your habits.

"It was really brave in the programme that mum admitted that she was partly to blame for my over eating - that as a parent she should have influenced me more."

One thing's for certain, Nicky doesn't miss being big.

"Now I feel I have no limitations - I can achieve anything."

The Insider: Fat Boys Epidemic, Friday, at 7.30pm on Channel 4

Source:The Daily Record