The boy can't help it...

The hundreds of press cuttings about 28-year-old model James Gooding, Kylie Minogue's "love rat" ex, now emerging as a photographer and TV presenter, make cringe-worthy reading. Martine McCutcheon, with whom he had a brief affair, says Gooding is "cheap and disgusting". Another ex, singer Victoria Harrison, called him a "pathetic loser". One of his male friends calls Gooding an "incorrigible, accomplished, world-class flirt" - the "Shoreditch Travolta", while a female admirer cooed: "You don't know whether to slap him or snog him."

Naturally, Kylie, now rumoured to be engaged to French actor Olivier Martinez, has been the most cutting. She said recently that as far as she is concerned the man she once called her "delightful scruff from Essex" doesn't exist. Ouch. But, then, Gooding said of Kylie: "I fear she's going to end up a lonely spinster with only a cat for company." Double ouch.

I guess all that bitching is to be expected when you kiss, tell and sell your love, sex and drugs story to the News of the World for an estimated £250,000. He said. She said. Don't you just love it?

Gooding first met Kylie backstage at the Brit Awards in March 2000. Exactly three years on, again at the Brits, the final nail was hammered into the coffin of their relationship when Gooding, clearly the worse for wear on drink, kicked up a jealous scene when Kylie snubbed him for a night on the tiles with the surprisingly bendy Justin Timberlake.

While Kylie has emerged triumphant, decked in Chanel and pearls, all the better to co-ordinate with her hot, 37-year-old Frenchman, the once swaggering Gooding is trying to pick up the pieces of his life.

When I ask him how he feels about the media frenzy surrounding his relationship with Kylie, he says in the slow, practised manner of a man who has been raked over the coals: "I was in a situation I had no control over. It was a very difficult time. I'm glad it's over."

His tabloid roasting was perhaps inevitable after he two-timed Kylie ("Yes, I admit I slept with Sophie Dahl and Davinia Taylor and Martine McCutcheon"), asked her for an open relationship, and generally behaved like a commitment-phobe cad. And as if that wasn't enough, he decided to kiss and tell.

Why? His honey-coloured eyes cloud over and his fingers strum the table. "I wanted to draw a line under it and move on. That part of my life is over. I want to distance myself from it." What has he learned from the experience? "Not to say any more than that," he says. Then he laughs.

After his embarrassing cuckolding at the Brits - he went so far as to stand vigil outside Kylie's Chelsea house, phoning her mobile to ask why she wasn't home - he went on a drugs bender, and ended up spending 10 days in rehab at Farm Place Clinic in Surrey. "Rehab was a scary and positive experience," he says. "If everyone just stopped and looked at themselves, the world would be a better place." He insists he hasn't touched alcohol or drugs in months.

Oddly, although he says he was hurt by the bad press he received, he has kept some of his cuttings. "You've gotta laugh because it's so bizarre and abstract," he says brightly.

We are in Soho House, in a private room at his request. We are supposed to talk about his role as the new face of Burton's autumn collection, chosen because he is "successful in his field". This poses a question: successful at what? Pulling high-profile babes?

Actually, he was a hard-working model for several years, shooting with Steven Meisel and Mario Testino. Sitting in front of me slurping Earl Grey and smoking organic cigarettes, he is still a cutie, but far more keen to talk about his new life as a photographer and TV presenter. He has just completed his first series for BBC3 about contemporary artists; it will be aired in September. And he recently shot a 14-page story at the Miami Biennale for fashion director Isabella Blow at Tatler.

"I'm not a fashion photographer, it doesn't really interest me, but you don't say no to Isabella Blow," he says and laughs madly. "I've carried a camera for eight years, I've just bought my first Hasselblad. That's where my head is," he says. I ask if he feels fragile. "F*** no! It's just that I want my work to speak for itself. Criticise me for my work, not for some s*** that was put on me."

I knew Gooding 10 years ago when we were with the same model agency. He was a teen-mags favourite - perfect skin, deliciously pouty lower lip, always looking in the mirror. Today his boyish good looks are tinged with wear and tear. He's very skinny, dressed in pinstripe flares, Adidas sneakers and a chocolate cardigan.

It's the perfect outfit for the new life he is constructing away from the paparazzi. He's even bought a new loft apartment "somewhere in Islington" to get away from the Shoreditch pad he and Kylie shared.

His background may hold the clue to his chaotic love life, although he refuses to elaborate. His parents divorced when he was six and, aged nine, he was placed in foster care for a year when his mother, Jenny, remarried because he couldn't get on with his stepfather.

His father, David, then enrolled him at Rannoch public school in Scotland, where he became a champion hurdler. His mother now cares for the elderly in Frinton, while his father runs a hotel in Scotland.

Gooding clams up when asked about his foster home - to the point of switching off my tape recorder. Nevertheless, he has agreed to work on a BBC project about life in foster care because he wants to "give something back".

Is this sober new, work-orientated James Gooding here to stay? Who knows. Certainly the smoothtalking-Lothario is not in evidence. There isn't even a new girl on the scene (women are wary of him these days). As he leaves he pulls his hair over his face and stoops; he seems to want to be invisible.

"I'm not dating, and have no desire to," he says resolutely.

When I ask if you can ever stop loving someone, his lower lip quivers and he says: "If there's love there, it never really goes away."

The boy has a heart after all.