(Cover) - EN Showbiz - Mika makes music because it gives him a “sense of identity”.

The 26-year-old musician was born in Beirut but his family was forced to flee war-torn Lebanon when he was just one. They moved to Paris, France, and later to London in England.

Mika says his nomadic childhood left him feeling like he didn’t belong. He was unsure about who he was or where he came from, but says all his negative feelings disappeared when he started writing songs.

He is now one of Britain’s most popular musicians, and can’t imagine doing anything else.

“I don’t feel like I belong to any country. It’s why I do what I do. It gives me a sense of identity,” he explained.

Mika is now much happier in his own skin. He can even laugh about the difficulties he faced as a teenager, saying it was probably good that his parents risked everything to keep him in a private school because he thinks his flamboyant personality would have seen him be “pulverised” in a state school.

‘I was kicked out of [private] school many times, for not being able to pay the bills – and my parents still refused to put me in state school, probably because I would have been pulverised,’ he told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. (C) Cover Media