Hot new Dance ready to rock Ali

Get ready to see Charles Dance as you have never seen him before. The 55-year-old actor, who made his name playing upper-class smoothies, shimmies onto cinema screens in a very different guise this week - alongside foul-mouthed spoof rapper Ali G.

Exactly why Dance is clad in a miniskirt and leopardskin top will only become clear when Ali G Indahouse is released on Friday, but suffice it to say the star of acclaimed TV series The Jewel in the Crown plays a fictional Chancellor of the Exchequer, forced to dress as a woman by the newly-elected Ali, played by Sacha Baron Cohen.

The honourable member for Staines campaigns for tax breaks on G-strings, goes on a fact-finding trip to Hollywood, has steamy scenes with leather-clad supermodel Naomi Campbell and brings breakdancing to the Commons.

In one scene, he and Me Julie - his girlfriend, played by Kellie Bright - are caught on camera at Chequers, the Prime Minister's country retreat, indulging in "jiggy".

"Sacha and I have a lot of physical stuff to do together in the film," Ms Bright said in a recent interview. "Kissing was a challenge. I'm only 5ft 1in and he's 6ft 3in so you can imagine the trouble I had."

It's all in extremely bad taste, as one would expect after Ali's outburst on Radio 1 last month, when he used a string of four-letter words during a live interview with DJ Sara Cox.

Appearing with the rudest rapper in Britain is a new role for Dance, whose most recent credits were in award-winning period movie Gosford Park and ITV's adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. He captured the viewers' imagination 20 years ago with a Bafta-winning performance as debonair Sergeant Guy Perron in Jewel in the Crown, set in India during the days of the Raj.

Known for his dashing good looks and suave roles, and once offered a screen test to play James Bond, Dance used to say he had been "pigeonholed" as a romantic leading man throughout his career.

Thanks to the baddest bad boy in the Staines Massive, that will no longer be the case.