My biggest role is being a Dad

Back in 1997 when The Big Breakfast was the must-see show of the entire day, let alone early morning, he was the man who provided the bacon, eggs and fried bread to Denise Van Outen's skinny cappuccino. While she was responsible for the froth and the glamour, he brought the quick wit, the intelligence and the show's direction. Without Johnny Vaughan, it was universally agreed, there would not have been the impressive viewing figures or the cult following.

When Johnny finally tired of the early starts at the beginning of 2001, no one was surprised when the BBC moved in, offering him a reputed £5 million two-year deal to present a late-night chat-and-comedy show and his own sitcom, 'Orrible. Young, talented and full of passion and energy, Johnny Vaughan was regarded as the next big thing, the boisterous, witty "lad" who appealed to both sexes. A marketing man's dream.

Roll forward 18 months. And while former co-star Denise is riding high following ecstatic reviews of her West End and Broadway performances in Chicago, at times - incredible as it seems - it is easy to forget that Johnny is still around. True, Johnny Vaughan's World Cup Extra went down well with the late-night football crowd, but both ' Orrible and the chat show failed to shine in the ratings, or impress the critics. What's more, the disappointments coincided with Bulmer's decision to call time on Johnny's £300,000-a-year job advertising Strongbow cider.

It has been a tough year. But sit down and chat to him and it becomes clear within minutes that his fears and worries are not, as you might expect, those of a young man obsessed with his career. For since leaving The Big Breakfast Johnny's life has changed in other directions too.

Today, aged 35, the ultimate "lad" is married and is, believe it or not, a churchgoer, having recently converted to his wife's Catholic faith. He and Antonia are also the proud parents of a two-year old daughter, Tabitha, and it's within this peaceful, domestic context that Vaughan, with his new distaste for showbiz gatherings, has become obsessed with fatherhood.

More than this, it seems to have sparked off dark childhood memories which had lain buried for some time, memories that have spurred him into providing the sort of upbringing for his child that he feels he was deprived of. "I don't have to work every day," he explains. "You work intensely for a period but I get good bursts of time now with my family in the day and in the week. It's so nice because most dads just step out of the house in the morning and think the world is going by because they are working nine to five. With me, I enjoy the best moments of the day with my daughter.

"The best moment is getting my daughter out of bed. We have a TV camera for Tabitha in her bedroom, so the first thing I hear in the morning is her going through her entire vocabulary to date. Ice cream crops up a lot at the moment.

"Antonia and I alternate showers, so that we are with her in the morning. Fatherhood really gets more enjoyable and my paternal love is growing day by day."

Part of his joy in fatherhood seems to be a desire to create the childhood that he never had himself. Born in 1966 in Totteridge, north London, Johnny lived in Barnet until he was eight, when he was sent away to Rutland to Uppingham School. It was "sheer misery", he says now.

"My dad was an engineer and he got some work up there, but I was sent to this boarding school. I must have been a bit of a handful, but I don't think they rated the local school up north.

"In London I had my mates, my home and my telly, and I was happy. From being a Londoner in a state school with all its comforts to suddenly being in this posh little school. It was absolutely awful and I became very miserable.

"You don't realise it at the time, but looking back I know this period of my life affected me. I can see that it gave me too much emotional independence and makes me really able to shut off. It trained me to be in an institution and be away from anything. I also felt this later on when I was in jail.

"You are conditioned not to have feelings and not to miss people. I had to go through this as a child, not being able to miss my family and do those normal family things.

"It was a weird thing. I am definitely not as close to my parents as my sister is. She saw them every day when she was growing up. If they say I never see them enough then my answer is that they should not have packed me off to school as a kid. Maybe I would be closer to them, and be in a better relationship now.

"It was not a good time for me. It was in the middle of nowhere. I got beaten by the teachers on my second night for talking after lights out. I must have been caned every week. I know I was a handful, but it was just awful."

Johnny Vaughan has always been a difficult man to pigeonhole. Former public schoolboy turned jailbird. Former local journalist turned television star. Former lad-about-town turned doting dad and, perhaps the most surprising of all, former television golden boy who seems so far to have failed to live up to his billing and his potential.

There are those who still question the wisdom of his decision to leave The Big Breakfast. When he departed in 2001 he was one of the bestknown faces on television. Things since then don't seem to have gone quite according to plan. But then as Johnny admits, he has never been a man with a proper plan.

After school he drifted from one job to another - grill chef, shop assistant, boxer shorts salesman - until in 1989, aged 23, he was convicted of conspiracy to supply cocaine and given a four-year sentence at Stocken prison in Leicestershire. He read copiously-inside and on leaving decided to try his hand at journalism, working for the Peterborough Herald.

He got his lucky break when a chance meeting with a friend led to work with a Channel 4 programme called MovieWatch. In 1997 he was offered the male presenting role on Channel 4's The Big Breakfast, where his witty ad-libbed paper reviews and on-screen flirtations with Denise Van Outen became must-see TV for millions.

In August 1999 he married long-time girlfriend and clothes designer Antonia Davies at St Thomas Moore Catholic Church in Chelsea.

They had first met years earlier when he worked in a video shop near her family home in west London. Baby Tabitha was born 10 months later. The couple live a quiet life, as far removed from that of Johnny's former co-host as it is possible to be.

"I prefer to take my wife to the cinema. I don't look down on the people who go to all these bashes, because they rely on profile - especially the women, who need to show their faces. But that's when people get bored with you and I don't want that. I'd rather people didn't see too much of me."