He was once Dennis Pennis who asked celebrities unpleasant questions on TV, but now Paul Kaye tells Steve Pratt that he wants to move on with his career. So his latest movie is about a self destructing DJ.

Paul Kaye is the man who asked American comedian Steve Martin when he was going to be funny again. He posed the cheeky question in his guise as flame-haired, bespectacled Dennis Pennis, who ambushed celebrities on the red carpet and asked them impertinent questions.

Kevin Costner, Cher and Demi Moore were among those who received the Pennis treatment. Most of them simply looked puzzled rather than annoyed by this line of questioning.

Kaye himself admits that he cringes when he watches the Steve Martin encounter now. "I expected him to give as good as he got," he says.

His days of taking the mickey out of celebrities is over. Kaye is an actor these days with TV series like Two Thousand Acres Of Sky and films, including Blackball, to his credit.

The world of celebrity doesn't hold any attraction for him. "I don't inhabit that world. I'm out of the village in that respect," he says. "I've never had any intention or desire to be involved in any celebrity life. I don't know any and have my own life completely separately.

"Dennis Pennis is coming up to ten years ago and was the first acting job I'd done. I came from a different background with no intention of performing. I kind of fell into that, it was a bit of an accident and lasted for about a year and a half.

"That was proper punk rock telly, no make-up or wardrobe, just me and a mate doing our thing. I cringe at a lot of it. I'm glad I did it, although I always liked the idea of doing it more than actually doing it. With the Pennis stuff, I think I was pissed the whole time I did that."

These days London-born Kaye is eager to show off his versatility. His latest starring film role in It's All Gone Pete Tong finds him as Frankie Wilde, a dance DJ who gradually loses his hearing as a result of his high decibel, hedonistic lifestyle. His personal crisis is played out against the background of the club culture in Ibiza.

He was as interested as anyone to see the finished movie, as much of it was improvised. "We came back with 65 hours of material, so you could cut 20 different films and never see the same shot twice. I was intrigued to see how it worked out," he says.

"The first cut was three hours long and my character wasn't deaf for one-and-a-half hours. Now in the film I'm deaf, or certainly not hearing that well, within about ten minutes."

He sees the story as a tragedy or very black comedy, although it was never played for laughs. "I was intrigued because all my kind of heroes like Hendrix and Sid Vicious all ended up dying, and this guy's already going that way. His disability saves his life. It he hadn't gone deaf, he'd be six feet under."

Wilde's manic lifestyle can only end in tears. Kaye knows a lot of people who have "pressed the self-destruct button". The one book he read before filming was Who drummer Keith Moon's biography. "It was one of the most depressing reads," he recalls.

"For all the highs, the lows were ten-fold in comparison. It was such a desperate story. The fact that he was a family man as well, but everyone just remembers him as the ultimate rock and roll star. The sadness and tragedy of his life was appalling. I wanted to get that across. It was not a celebration of a hedonistic lifestyle."

He felt the role came at the right time for him. "I didn't think anyone else could do it as good as me. Without sounding arrogant, I'd been looking for a job like this for a while. I felt it was absolutely the right time. I'm coming up to 40 and needed to get a lot off my chest and still had a lot of energy," he says.

"I didn't hang out in Ibiza before we started shooting. I arrived the day before and the director got the crew together with the cast and emphasised that the film wouldn't get made if everyone didn't keep on the straight and narrow. It was proper guerilla film-making."

It took place during one of the hottest summers on record, so filming in real clubs like Manumission was hard. "It was pandemonium," he says. "It was like being surrounded by nine-and-a-half thousand pill-munching maniacs in 43 degrees, so the sweat was real. "

Kaye would like to do more serious roles, feeling he hasn't had the roles he feels qualified to do. "People haven't been sure what to do with me. I wasn't a comedian because I'd never done stand-up," he says.

"I like to think I've taken a few risks in my career, but never taken a job knowing what I'm going to do next. I've spent a lot of time, the last three or four years, not working. This film was heaven sent because I could throw myself into it."

* It's All Gone Pete Tong (15) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: 26/05/2005