I don't want to be cool

Jason Donovan enters the room, flamboyantly removes his expensive-looking coat and casually lets it drop to the floor. As he has his photo taken he is confident and courteous, chatting away non-stop. He lifts off his peaked hat, smooths his thinning hair and pulls a face. "Should I keep this hat on? I'm not particularly fond of my hair at the moment."

But as soon as Donovan sits down, his demeanour changes. He wraps his arms around his body in a defensive manner, bites his nails and pulls at his lips. He says he's tired after a day's rehearsal for the lead role of Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Palladium, but it seems he also feels anxious about the prospect of talking about himself.

Anxious, perhaps, because just a couple of years ago he was at pubs around the country, performing in front of drunken revellers after his years at the top. Meanwhile, his old girlfriend Kylie Minogue was starting her reign as the queen of pop.

And that seems to be part of his problem in terms of public perception. The two Australians, who were lovers in Neighbours and in real life, both started out as Eighties pin-ups, and their diverging careers are forever being compared.

So much so, one wonders if Jason's West End appearance is an attempt to steal back some of the limelight he once shared with Kylie. Although Jason may not be keen to discuss her, he knows she will always be there as a measure of his own success.

Of course, there is no escaping the fact that Jason was the golden boy-next-door who joined Neighbours straight out of school at 18, became a ridiculously successful solo artist and then a West End star in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

A golden boy who felt so suffocated, insecure and desperate to be cool that finally he crashed and burned in a blur of cocaine-fuelled partying. "I was pretty bad; I was a binger. Yet I never worried I was out of control. I knew I'd come out of it."

He sighs. "I had to find out who I was. I wanted to mess my perfect image up a bit and I did. I thought I could find a different me by doing drugs."

Although he had been phenomenally successful, Donovan wanted more than anything to be cool - like Kylie. More than a decade on, Donovan's voice rises as he talks about his quest to be accepted by the fashionable crowd.

"My biggest dark days were spent trying to be cool. But actually, cool is bullshit. I should have been more relaxed, but there I was at the age of 24, running around on stage every night doing Joseph in a loincloth, while my friends were listening to Nirvana."