Donny Osmond is due to call at 9.30 a.m. It is 9.15 a.m. and just when you are wondering whether it is polite to ask the walking toothpaste ad whether he flosses twice a day, the phone rings. Damn. Whoever heard of a celebrity being 15 minutes early for a publicity appointment? Hi, this is Donny Osmond can I speak to Roseen, he says. He wants to know what Roseen means. He thinks it's kinda cute. Then he asks about the origin of Ingle. This is too weird. For a moment, Donny Osmond, former jump-suit wearing, 1970s child star, is interviewing me.
Wresting the discussion from the squeaky clean mitts of Mr Osmond is easy enough. What's this about a new album of show tunes, your first in more than 10 years? And he's off. It's like chatting to the 42-year-old bloke next door about his latest gadget. He is so genuinely enthusiastic it's almost infectious. "It's produced by Phil Ramone, you know Phil, he's one of the best producers you can get . . . he produced Frank Sinatra's duets album. I'm really happy with it," he says.
There is, he adds, a Bill Waylen track on the album. Bill who? Oh, you mean Whelan. "Yeah, Bill Waylen from Riverdance, and also I rang Andrew Lloyd Webber and told him I wanted a song that nobody else had so that's how I ended up with Our Kind Of Love from his new show, The Beautiful Game . . . I was the first one to get it," he enthuses.
For readers under 30, here is a brief introduction: The Osmonds were famously Mormon, famously from Utah and famously quite the most kitsch musical act to come out of the 1970s. Like the Jackson 5, an overbearing daddy formed them. Mr Osmond's plan was to help to spread the Mormon message around the world through his musical and photogenic offspring.
Donny Osmond started out in showbiz at the age of five and by the time he was eight, he was touring Europe with his four brothers. He was the one the girls all wanted to take home. When he went solo (Puppy Love, anyone?) Osmondmania led to Donnymania but eventually by his early 20s, Donny had washed up on the same celebrity island inhabited by child stars such as The Partridge Family's David Cassidy and that chubby-cheeked actor from the US sitcom Diff'rent Strokes.
"It will never be that way again," he says, with some considerable relief, of those hysterical days when a balcony collapsed under the weight of fans who had gathered to greet the band at Heathrow Airport. "I wouldn't want it to be, I don't want to be acting like I am 13 again. I will never be able to create that level of hype and hysteria, it's about the music now."
Since then, he has been alone among his siblings in trying to forge a new musical career - the others are happy to churn out the old hits at the Osmond Family Theatre set up by the youngest one, Jimmy. Now 38, Jimmy once had a hit with a song called Long Haired Lover From Liverpool. Enough said.
"Musically, I have always wanted to move on," says Donny. "I never wanted to just stay in the past." But being an Osmond hasn't exactly helped his progress. Does it irritate him that people are more interested in his musical past, his religion - his teeth, for goodness sake - than his career? "It doesn't annoy me," says Donny, patiently. "It just gets in the way of the music."
There have been times when Donny has been helped along in his struggle for a little bit of street cred. In the mid-1980s, "when Peter Gabriel came into my life," people took a bit more notice. Gabriel did some work with Donny. "People thought: well, if he is interested, he must be OK," he remembers. Similarly, when Lloyd Webber picked him to star in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the beginning of the 1990s, it led to six years at the top of musical theatre. Being the toast of Broadway was an invaluable experience, says the Donmeister. "You and I both know that there are a lot of untalented musicians out there," he says conspiratorially. "And their careers will last 15 minutes . . . The fact that I succeeded in that forum gave such legitimacy to me and my musical career." At the time, he suffered from severe panic attacks caused by "wanting everything to be perfect". But he worked it out. "Lots of therapy," he explains.
He even got his own daytime TV show with sister Marie. The clean-living siblings - the Mormon religion forbids alcohol, caffeine, drugs, and sex before marriage - then garnered the ultimate pop culture accolade when they were featured on MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch. Their caricatures sported massive teeth and despatched opponents with something called the Mormon Munch. "I thought it was hilarious," says Donny, to his credit.
A recent TV documentary revealed that despite the "happy families" veneer, severe sibling rivalry bubbled under the surface. The other brothers expressed their resentment at the fact that Donny's solo career had taken off. He apparently had no idea - and the family have since been sorting out their differences.
At the Brit awards, Donny was seen doing some serious networking, chatting to the likes of Bono, prompting some very loose talk that the U2 front man and he were planning a duet. "That's just a rumour," says Donny, clearly wishing it were otherwise. His new album is a mix of show tunes from musicals such as Aida, Saturday Night Fever and Jekyll and Hyde. A highlight is his duet with Rosie O'Donnell on You've Got A Friend In Me from Toy Story. At the end of the song, the US actress confesses she had Donny's image thumb-tacked to her bedroom wall. Nostalgia lovers will enjoy the bonus CD that includes a new recording of his signature ballad, Puppy Love.
When not on the comeback trail, Donny enjoys a normal life with his wife and five sons in Utah, where he likes to do yard work and the washing-up. His advice to the current crop of teen stars is: "don't believe your own hype." "Some people do and then go off to live in never-never land," he says in a thinly veiled reference to his mate Michael Jackson. He is quite witty, is Donny, and also seems to be A Very Nice Man - at the end of our chat he obligingly belted out a line from Puppy Love.
He casts a knowing look at the charts occasionally with the air of one who has been there, done that. "I look at these new acts and think: have a great time, enjoy the wild ride, it's a lot of fun," he says. "And good luck when it stops." As Donny Osmond knows, they will need it.
Donny Osmond's This Is The Moment is released on Universal