There aren't many teenagers who can say they've sung with a swing orchestra at Blackpool Tower, appeared on Saturday night TV with the king of chat, Michael Parkinson, and recorded their debut album next door to Sir Paul McCartney.

But then Peter Grant is certainly not your average teenager.

Performing from a tender age, the former Guiseley School pupil always seemed destined to carve out a career in music, but the mercurial pace of his rise to No. 8 in the British charts - at just 18 years old - has staggered even him.

"I couldn't believe it, " he says of the success of his album New Vintage. "I was quietly confident that eventually it would do well, but I never imagined it would go straight into the Top Ten. It still hasn't sunk in, to be honest."

Little else seems to faze the confident yet down-to-earth crooner, whose silky voice has been compared to the likes of Matt Monro and Harry Connick Jr.

After all, music is very much a world in he has grown up. The second son of Guiseley couple Peter and Sheila Grant, he was, he says, "six or seven" when he first sang in public. "My dad was a tenor, like Mario Lanza. He'd finished singing professionally when I was born but he would still get up and sing on holiday and I used to jump up on stage with him. It was very cheesy."

By the time he reached secondary school, he began getting into swing, jazz and classic ballads of the kind re-popularised by Robbie Williams and Michael Buble. Peter, though, sought out the originals from the Forties and Fifties and quickly had ambitions to sing in the style of classic American crooners.

"My mum and dad went down the charity shops and bought all the big records for pennies, really. I learned off the records - Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Buddy Greco. They're pretty cool vocal teachers."

While also polishing up his piano playing - he eventually reached grade eight - he began performing in working men's clubs. "When I got to 11 my voice changed big time and I thought, 'Whoa! This is interesting.' My parents said, 'Let's do some gigs.' They were like roadies. I loved doing the club circuit - and it got me out of school."

The experience proved the making of him. By his admission "a bit of an attention-seeker - not in a bad way, I wasn't one of those cheeky kids", he thoroughly enjoyed the buzz of singing live. "I never wanted to get off the stage; once I was on there it was where I wanted to be."

Inevitably he left school at 16 to become a professional performer. PR legend has it he only passed one GCSE - an A* in music - though Peter admits "if you asked my mum, I got quite a few. I couldn't tell you what they were, I didn't pay too much attention to them, but I'm not that thick kid who didn't get through his exams. It was just music that I was interested in."

Already a dab hand at the club circuit, he soon got corporate work. "I did weddings, funerals, anything. From that I did a season at Blackpool Tower in the summer of 2004 with the Memphis Belle Swing Orchestra.

Then I was doing cruise ships - a fortnight in Barbados, that was all right! I swapped my school books for showgirls, it was good fun."

Peter's big break, though, when his management invited the producer Don Reedman to one of his shows. "He loved what I did, " Peter recalls. "We started talking and got on really well and the next week were in Abbey Road doing the album!"

Working in one of rock's most famous recording studios was "quite something", he says.

"I'm in there doing my thing, in the next studio was Paul McCartney. It's an amazing place, there are pictures on the walls of all the people who've recorded there , it's got such a good vibe about it."

Further good fortune followed when Michael Parkinson began championing his recordings of songs such as Joanna, Windmills of Your Mind and The Girl from Ipanema on his BBC Radio 2 show and later invited him on to his TV chat show. Parky, Peter says, is "such a dude; he invited me down to play in his pub with my band".

Peter also struck up a friendship with Kildwick singer Clare Teal at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. The pair plan to duet at Leeds City Varieties on June 8 and the Grand Opera House, York, on June 18.

"I can't wait to do the City Varieties, it's such a cool place, " Peter says. "All my family and friends are coming down, people who've known me since I was singing into my keyboard in working men's clubs. I'm hoping they'll see the difference."

Another show he's especially looking forward to is the reopening of Ronnie Scott's Soho jazz club after its refurbishment. "That's on July 2. It'll be weird, " he says. "I've seen so many great gigs there - people like Georgie Fame - and now we've got the chance to reopen it."

Later in the year he's also hoping to visit Australia and Germany then start work on his second album, for which he's been cowriting songs with Don Black (the author of five Bond themes and regular collaborator with Andrew Lloyd Webber). "It's pretty amazing, " Peter says, with understatement.

As the song goes, the best is yet to come for Peter Grant.

Peter Grant plays at the City Varieties music hall, Leeds on Wednesday, June 7 and Thursday, June 8. For tickets contact 08456 441 881. He will also be guesting at Clare Teal's concert at the Grand Opera House, Yorkon Sunday, June 18. Contact 0870 145 1163. Peter's album, New Vintage is available now on Universal Music.