Could Andrés Velencoso be any more of a model man?

Googling pictures of Andrés Velencoso, Kylie’s 34-year-old model boyfriend, one hardly knows where to look, so smoking is the smoulder, so broad is the shoulder, so carved is the torso. It’s parallel-universe beauty, plinth beauty, the kind of beauty that sells but doesn’t tempt. In one image he’s writhing naked in the sand, hair all Farrah Fawcett, hands covering his bits. Sexy? It would be like getting turned on by a picture of He-Man.

But the person who descends the staircase at Blakes Hotel is, well, man squared. In a good way. The waitress blushes, fellow diners pause, forks held in suspension, jaws at a standstill, and I brace myself. Because it’s hard to concentrate. Because he may be the veteran of Chanel, Vuitton (with J-Lo: ‘She is very nice — not so fluent in Spanish. But she is not from Spain, she is from the Block’), Lacoste, Armani, Gaultier and Loewe campaigns but, face to face, he is less cartoon, more dream made flesh. Or muscle.

Kylie, who he met on the set of a shoot for her male fragrance Inverse, is virtually absent from his conversation. He swerves questions rather beautifully for someone for whom English is a fourth language after Spanish, French and Italian. He does, however, talk in ‘we’s’ almost constantly. And when I ask him about settling down and having children, he looks faintly affronted and says: ‘I am settled. And we would love a family, of course.’

He has lived, presumably with Kylie, in South Kensington since moving from New York in 2009, but spends lots of time on and off planes for work — ‘shootings’ — or visiting his hometown, Tossa de Mar, a seaside backwater 100km from Barcelona. ‘There are 5,000 people living there in winter but 45,000 in summer. It was a fishing town back in the day but now it’s more about tourism.’

His parents — his mother died of cancer in 2002 — ran a bar and restaurant where he worked summers from the age of 14. ‘I wanted my first scooter and I needed to get money and to convince my father to let me buy it.’ He was no spotty, gangly disaster of an adolescent. ‘It all went quite smoothly,’ he says. Can you imagine being a teenage holidaymaker, wandering sun-blinded into a bar and being confronted with this? Good Lord, he must have drummed up some business. And cleaned up at the same time. ‘I did clean up,’ he shrugs not very ruefully.

The ease with which he accepts the intensity of his good looks is rather compelling. It’s just empiric fact to him. Fact upon which he has built a career. But then you wouldn’t trust an accountant who claimed to be bad at maths, or a nanny who said they had no way with children. I like him for dodging the humble brag. And I like him even more for dodging the spiritual speak so endemic among models. Believe me, there are far too many late-blooming Buddhists omming up and down the catwalks.

Andrés’ looks, thus far, are both his talent and his qualification. When he walked into his first agency — ‘a-yency’ — in Barcelona, aged 20, ‘They said, “Amazing!” and I was like, “Wow! What’s happening? They like me.” Then I went to a bigger a-yency and they said, “Amazing!” ’ With the wisdom of hindsight, he sees what they saw and does an impression of an agent rubbing their hands together in avaricious glee. ‘They couldn’t believe their luck. But, you know, most of it is right time, right place, right people. It’s a very strange business.’

And now he’s acting. He has a film coming out called Fin and he’s nervy about it. ‘The worst that could happen would be for people to say: “This guy cannot act. He is just another pretty face on the big screen.” Then I’d have to do a shitty TV show.’

People had been telling him to act for years but ‘I am a bit stubborn maybe. I swim against the tide. I was also scared and insecure — I didn’t know if I could do it.’ Being with Kylie, who has performance coursing through her tiny veins, could have helped or hindered, particularly because she’s just done a turn in the surreal sci-fi Holy Motors, which was received with the blanket rapture English-speaking critics reserve for French-language movies. Perhaps it did both, because slowing down on the travel to be with her in London — which is implicit but by no means stated outright, God forbid — gave him space to think. Having said that: ‘If anything, it made me more afraid because I am with someone who is so good and amazing at what she does.’

They stay in a lot. They dance around the kitchen. He sings in the shower. He’s obsessed with The X Factor. ‘I go crazy. I spent most of last weekend staring at the TV watching The X Factor and I get very moved actually. I like James, the guy who pulls his T-shirt in agony. And the one who laughs like The Penguin.’ They go to Cambio de Tercio, around the corner, because he loves Spanish food but can’t cook. ‘Well, nothing major. If you were coming to dinner, I could produce a Spanish omelette.’ They go to Nobu and to Nick Jones’s new gaff, Little House, ‘which is good but so packed, and when we go to the theatre we go to J Sheekey.’

He hates shopping and doesn’t have favourite labels, but plucks at his grey V-neck remembering it’s Dolce & Gabbana. His black jeans are Dior and his suede jacket is Loewe (he also fronts its current A/W campaign). ‘Now I sound like a fashion victim but it’s just stuff I see in the store and like.’

He’s steady. Kylie has said before that where she is changeable, he is constant. He works out at Chelsea’s KX gym and plays a lot of golf, the suburban, slightly sexist, uptight image of which is at odds with his laid-back matador vibe. He likes the course at The Grove and plays a lot with Kylie’s tour manager Sean Fitzpatrick. ‘Kylie used to play. She had very small clubs. She couldn’t use mine — that wouldn’t work.’