DARREN Day seems to have almost given up trying to escape the tabloid-awarded title of Britain's biggest celebrity love rat.

He's broken the hearts of so many beautiful girls that it's hardly surprising to find him clad in a blue uniform at Sunderland's Glass Centre this week and announcing he's giving up playing Prince Charming in panto for the comedy role of Buttons.

"So you're concentrating on being the guy who doesn't get the girl?" comes the question over his Christmas role in Cinderella for Sunderland's Empire Theatre and Day bursts out laughing and offers me a job as his agent.

Despite his much-publicised bedroom antics, the job offers just keep rolling in. Four broken engagements to other celebrities, a self-confessed drug habit that almost wrecked his stage career, a bad-tempered display in TV's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here and the scandal over the 35-year-old pinching 21-year-old musical co-star Suzanne Shaw from under the nose of her fianc would have wrecked many careers.

But the singer, actor and mimic, who counts much-married TV star Jim Davidson as a mate and mentor, is moving on from playing the Cliff Richard role in the musical Summer Holiday to take on the West End lead in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Along the way, there's four weeks in pantomime at Sunderland.

Of the current interest in him since last year's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here he says: "I'm not a believer that all publicity is good publicity and the trouble with being front page news is that you're always front page news.

"Also, I'd been doing low-profile stuff for a while and it was a bit of a shock because it had been about three years since I'd been front page news and having controversy surrounding my life and it was back with a vengeance and then some. "I don't know why the Press are so obsessed with me really. They've been on my case for the last few weeks. They seem to be more interested in my private life than I am."

Day believes that the fuss will die down if he concentrates on becoming the best Buttons in the business as part of a low-profile campaign.

He adds: "I pleaded for ages with Jim Davidson (who is currently running the pantos at Sunderland) to play Buttons instead of Prince Charming because it allows me to do the comedy that I got into this business to do. Jim's the best Buttons on the scene, but it means that I can do what I love to do and not get into any trouble for it.

"We've been quite good mates for a long, long time and I stayed at his house two weeks ago. No one makes me laugh like him and he doesn't half cook some good sausages."

Day never went to panto as a boy in Colchester but he went to see his uncle, the performer Dickie Henderson, in summer shows.

His introduction to panto came by playing Buttons for the first time at Maidstone, in 1989.

Of the jungle experiences in the 2002 I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here he says: "Anything has got to be easier than that. It was the most bizarre experience of my life. I don't regret it and the reason I did it was I thought there would never be another time in my life where I could be in the rainforest for three weeks."

Day admits backing out of a Kenyan safari because he hated the thought of creepy crawlies and says he thought ITV's Australian event would be a controlled environment with no snakes or spiders.

"I foolishly believed they had cleared all these things out. How wrong I was, and I still have three snake bites on my leg from this reed snake when I was doing a challenge to try and retrieve eight gold stars," he says, offering to roll up his trouser leg to show his battle scars. Day reveals it was "the biggest shock" to see how much publicity was generated by the show, which was eventually won by DJ Tony Blackburn and won a Bafta. The eight celebs didn't even know the time of day, let alone the media interest, and Day admits he'd prepared for a "survival of the fittest" set of challenges rather than the mental torment of no cigarettes and losing a stone in weight on a rice-based menu.

"I actually expected Noel Edmonds to leap out from behind a tree with a Gotcha," he jokes. "I remember coming back and this guy shouting at me 'Have you had a poo yet Darren?' because my bowel movements were being discussed on TV."

Even in the jungle, Day couldn't avoid his lovelife coming under scrutiny and allegations that he was having an affair with Summer Holiday co-star Clare Buckfield, girlfriend of show host Dec Donnelly.

He claims he and North-East TV star Dec are good mates, saying: "There was never anything going on with Clare," and revealing that the two staged a pretend fight for the benefit of the newspapers.

When the celebrities were being evicted from the jungle, Day says Dec winked at him to let him know when it was someone else.

"I knew it was me when he couldn't look me in the eye, and part of you wants to go but part wants to stay," he says.

As for his Cinderella co-star, the comely Kate Heavenor of Children's BBC, one can only hope that her Darren Day resisting strategy of "already having a boyfriend" is successful. Otherwise, Suzanne Shaw is next on the list of yester-Days.

*Sunderland Empire's production of Cinderella runs from December 12 until January 11, 2004. Box office: 0191-514 2517