Baimurat Allaberiyev doesn't look like a pop star. He's 38 years old, but looks well into his forties, and his creased, leathery face hints at a life of sadness and toil.
For the past two years, the native of mountainous Tajikistan has lived near Kolomna, a provincial Russian town just outside Moscow, where he earns a paltry salary stacking boxes in a supermarket.
Two of his front teeth are missing after Russian skinheads took a dislike to his Asiatic features earlier this year and attacked him, unprovoked, while he was sitting on a train.
But things are changing for Mr Allaberiyev, and the Tajik labourer is on the cusp of unlikely stardom, thanks to a bizarre course of events that is part Susan Boyle, part Slumdog Millionaire.
In front of a packed crowd of twenty-somethings at Solaynka, one of Moscow's hippest nightclubs, he steps onto the stage to yelps from adoring fans and belts out Jimmy Jimmy Aaja, a classic Bollywood number and his trademark song.
Pretty young Russian girls, the kind who would cross the road to avoid Tajik labourers in real life, scream out "Jimmy Boy, we love you!" and the crowd claps along to the catchy melody.
Mr Allaberiyev's incredible tale begins with a series of YouTube videos.
Entitled Tajik Jimmy, they feature a downtrodden Central Asian in a variety of grim looking workshops and building sites, wearing a scruffy shell-suit and singing the song, while co-workers giggle and egg him on.
His voice is unexpectedly good, and he sings both parts of the love song, using a pitch-perfect falsetto soprano for the female lines.
Further entertainment comes from the fact that he accompanies himself on an imaginary keyboard, and despite the grim surroundings looks genuinely happy and absorbed in bizarre dance moves and gestures.
The clips rapidly became YouTube favourites, gaining hundreds of thousands of hits in the space of a few months.
