Johnny Borrell wants to be loved. Even by North Americans.

The Razorlight front man arrives for his interview on time, and offers a thoughtful answer - and, more often than not, a smile - for every question asked. At his band's first Canadian gig, at a packed Lee's Palace on a rainy January night in Toronto, he's all about entertaining the faithful - darting around the stage, breaking it down, letting a few of them strum his guitar, turning up on the ledge that hangs over the floor for a bit of rock-star posturing.

Minutes after it's over, he's standing beside his tour bus, posing for photos with admiring young ladies willing to overlook the most English set of teeth this side of Austin Powers.

It's the sort of act one might expect from a particularly eager American pop star, or maybe a sober Sam Roberts. But it's not how British rock stars - or those approaching such status, at least - are supposed to behave.

One after another, highly touted U.K. acts have turned up on our shores looking like they wished they were somewhere else - and disillusioned fans have wound up feeling the same way. Now, even enthusiastic entries like Razorlight find themselves facing an uphill battle against suspicions they'll turn out to be just another collection of NME darlings glumly going through the motions.

It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that despite the generally positive reviews deservedly drawn by Razorlight's debut album, Up All Night, Borrell has rubbed a contingent of the fickle U.K. press the wrong way. That's partly owing, no doubt, to his unrepentant immodesty. ("I would be quite cynical because there's been so many awful ones," he offers when asked about North American fatigue with overhyped British bands. "I can't help it I'm in one of the good ones.") But it's more because he doesn't play the game the way they want him to.

Sure, Razorlight's garage rock may sound a lot like the Libertines, Britain's most fawned-over rock act of the past couple of years. But whereas estranged Libertines front man Pete Doherty has turned himself into a British folk hero staggering around the country so strung out that he's barely coherent, Borrell - a former heroin addict - proudly proclaims he got the drugs out of his system by the time he was 20. "That's not a good one for your creativity," he says of substance abuse, "but it's a good one if you want to fall out of cars and go to parties and have people you don't give a shit about tell you you're great."

If his lack of chemical usage isn't incongruous enough with London's music scene, his indiscrete choice of influences sure is. Despite his insistence that he's not looking to be "trendy," I expect him to bristle when I tell him I hear traces of Springsteen on a couple of Up All Night's more anthemic tracks, including the standout Vice. Instead he breaks into a broad grin. "Oh, that's wonderful!" he says. "Born to Run - what a great song!"

Such populist leanings alone should be enough to endear him to North Americans weary of English snobbery (even if they wouldn't be caught dead with a Springsteen disc on their own shelves). But what really helps is that Borrell is willing to do the tough slogging on this side of the Atlantic that most of his contemporaries neglect.

"When I wake up and I'm in California, and we're going to play the Troubadour where Elton John played and where all these fantastic people played ... you look up at the sunshine and you think 'Wow!' " he enthuses. "It's interesting, and it's a lot more fun than being at home and smoking a spliff, you know what I mean?

"There's nothing better than being on stage. And if being on stage isn't the best thing in your life, then you shouldn't be on it."

It's unfashionable for serious musicians to acknowledge that they want to be rock stars. But Borrell positively embraces it, clearly adoring being the centre of attention and desperately trying to show the paying public enough that they'll want to come back.

"When I do shows that I don't think are good, I'm just f---ing inconsolable," he says. "It's the only thing I want to do. I'm quite simple, really."

Actually, a simple rock star might be exactly what anglophiles are looking for. Among the mopers and shoegazers, junkies and wannabe prophets, Borrell might be the one best suited to winning over this side of the Atlantic. It's too bad that those who came before Razorlight may have already ruined it for him.