Calvin Harris: From bedroom DJ to double Brit-winner

Calvin Harris has undergone quite the transformation, from being a budding DJ recording in his bedroom to becoming a double Brit-winning musician who models on the side.

But the Scottish star’s success did not come overnight.

The 35-year-old started recording demos in his bedroom in his teens and has been plugging away at his career ever since.

Now, after 16 Brit nominations in 10 years, he has won not one but two awards – British producer of the year and British single for One Kiss, his track with Dua Lipa.

Harris said it meant “a lot” to have won his first ever Brit.

The star, who also performed at the show for the first time, added: “I’ve been coming here for a few years and I’ve never got the opportunity to say anything on this stage before.

“I want to thank the people at home, I want to thank these people here, I want to thank anyone that has bought a tune, streamed a tune, come to a show, listened to a song by accident on the radio and gone, ‘What’s this?”

Harris’s music career got started when he was spotted on social networking website MySpace.

But he did not get his real break until 2006, when he signed a recording contract with Sony BMG.

The following year his first album, I Created Disco, made a splash when it reached number eight in the UK.

Two years later he scored a number one with Ready For The Weekend and followed it up with another chart-topper, entitled 18 Months (2012).

With his star on the rise, Harris also honed his look and became something of a heartthrob.

In 2014 he was announced as the new face of Emporio Armani’s men’s underwear line and wowed fans everywhere when he stripped down to his boxers for the ads.

Harris has also enjoyed a couple of high profile romances with stars such as Rita Ora and Taylor Swift.

He dated Swift for over a year but the pair went through a very high-profile split in 2016, which attracted even more attention when Swift quickly moved on with Tom Hiddleston.

In the wake of the break up, Harris had a pop at Swift on Twitter and removed pictures of the singer from his Instagram.

He later told GQ magazine that when their romance ended “all hell broke loose”.

He said: “The aftermath of the relationship was way more heavily publicised than the relationship itself. When we were together, we were very careful for it not to be a media circus. She respected my feelings in that sense. I’m not good at being a celebrity.”