"Dolphins Make Me Cry" was called lachrymose (given to weeping) by an unimpressed Q magazine but at least now they're noticing MARTYN JOSEPH. Gavin Drake reports.

You have made a big step going out into the mainstream. Are you sure that you are doing the right thing?

"I'm always thinking 'am I doing the right thing?' I've never been positive that this is the right thing, we're all thinking 'what's the perfect thing we should be doing with our lives?' I think that life is a gift - you take it and God asks 'well, what are you going to do with it?' Whilst I'm sure that there are times when there are specific things he might have planned for us, I think that often he just wants us to get on with it. I'm just doing what I think I do best at the time. This is all I do. So if I hadn't got the record deal at the time I did who knows what I might have done? I'd more or less said that if I couldn't get a secular deal I was going to spend more time with my family. So I get those sort of feelings. I guess they're just everyday things that everybody has to live with."

Now that it looks as though you're a success, are you getting different thoughts?

"Not really, because we've got such a long way to go. In a way those fears are even greater. O.K. I've got a little bit of success. But I think we've still got an awful long way to go."

Has the chart success made a difference to you in your local community?

"Very few people have made the connection. I think there are a few people in my hometown that know me from the past and they've not made a big response yet. If I continue to have such success then ask me that question in a year's time. I get the odd nod and I hear people whispering things. It's a little strange, but it's nice as well, everyone likes a bit of attention, but it's not reached the point where I'm being hassled in anyway. Yet I would hope that were it to happen, it wouldn't change me and that I'd be able to deal with it in the appropriate manner."

Your single "Working Mother" was on a rather taboo subject. Tell me a little about it.

"'Working Mother' is about a lady who lives up in the North of England who has to travel to Kings Cross everyday - she's a prostitute and the only way she can provide food for her kids is to go out and do that. It's just her human story. The word prostitute can conjure up all sorts of things in people's minds, it's just saying 'look, this is why it's happened - this is how it is'."

Who was your main influence in the early days?

"Elvis Presley was certainly the first voice that emotionally did something inside of me. That would be around about the 1970's when I guess I was discovering music in its essence for the first time. That of course was the Las Vegas period which was often seen as his worst time. But I used to love all that. I used to buy all the live albums with songs like "Wonder Of You". He was the first guy and indeed the only person who really stirs me and moves me. So from a founding aspect it would have to be Elvis. And then of course it went on to all sorts of things, Led Zeppelin, for example. Eventually I began to study some of the Christian performers and it kind of progressed. But Elvis was the first artist who really stirred me.

Maybe one day Martyn Joseph will be as big as Elvis.

"Impossible. It won't happen. I'm even amazed this is happening. If I really do achieve a lot of success I just want to be true to what I believe in because of my faith and be truthful to the way I feel my faith should be expressed in everything that I do. I'm surrounded by a lot of good friends whom I don't think would let me change that."

What part does your faith play in your music?

"It plays a large part because every time I sit down to write a song I write a song with the perspective that we're not 'just here for 70 years if you're lucky'. So everything I write will be permeated by my faith. I believe in conversion, I believe in change, I believe in the words 'do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself, this plays a very big part in my life and my music."