Darren Day remembers his fall from grace with vivid clarity. “I was playing Danny Zuko in Grease – a dream role,” he tells me. “I always wanted to play Danny, it was one of my favourite movies, and in 1999 I was given the role in the West End, but I was in big trouble at the time.” The former fresh face of ITV had succumbed to the murky pulls of cocaine and alcohol. “I did two shows on Saturday, and after the evening show I went out and partied. I came to at 10 or 11am on Monday. I was propped up outside the Cambridge Theatre and woke up to the clinking of coins hitting the pavement – people thought I was homeless. I looked up and saw my name in pink neon lights…I was obviously completely unrecognisable.”
Essex-born Darren, now happily sober, has been engaged to actress Sophie Ladds for five years and is looking forward to reprising his role as Billy Flynn in the touring production of Chicago next month. But he is brutally honest about his past mistakes, and, refreshingly, he blames nobody but himself for his downfall. Day, 56, had been the golden boy of light entertainment, the wholesome host of ITV’s Saturday night hit You Bet! with glamorous girlfriends and the world at his feet. But it just wasn’t enough for him.
His big break came in 1993 when he replaced Philip Schofield as the lead in the West End run of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. “I was singing in clubs and working part time as a labourer on building sites when [former DJ turned talent manager] Peter Powell got me audition for Joseph. I didn’t think I’d get it, but I thought at least I can stand on stage and sing a couple of songs for Andrew Lloyd Webber.” Fame struck like lightning. “I couldn’t walk down a street without being recognised. On my first Saturday at the London Palladium there were 3,000 girls at the stage door stopping the traffic. Nigel Lythgoe at LWT signed up me and I signed my first record deal with Simon Cowell at RCA, I was earning a fortune” – he was taking home £10,000 a week from Joseph alone. Darren joined the Summer Holiday musical in the clean-cut Cliff Richard role and had at Top 20 hit with Summer Holiday Medley in 1996 – the year he started hosting You Bet!
“For the first four years I was ‘the new Jason Donovan’, ‘the new Cliff’,” he says. “I kept my nose clean. I’d have a few beers with mates, but I’d never even seen drugs. Then a magazine had me as ‘the ultimate boy next door’ on a right-hand page opposite Liam Gallagher as the ‘ultimate bad boy’; I remember thinking, I want to be the one on the left!” He was mocked for not being rock’n’roll enough. Darren recalls partying with Gallagher and Johnny Depp after hosting You Bet! on TV. Days later, the NME wrote ‘Darren Day’s new album is so middle-of-the-road he’s in danger of being run over’. “I was going out with Anna Friel and getting cruel comments like ‘How can she be going out with him?’ She was hot, I was naff. It hurt. I’m not made of stone. I was a working-class council estate boy made good. I wanted to rebel a little and within weeks it was out of hand.”
He became dependent on cocaine. “Now I think why couldn’t I embrace the success of being on Saturday night TV appealing to family audiences and making MOR records? I’d give my right arm for that now.”
He is equally candid about getting fired by ITV in 1998. “I did an interview to promote Don’t Try This At Home, ITV’s new flagship show, on The Big Breakfast and went straight to the studio from Brown’s nightclub. I was a state and I blew it. They sacked me.”
The following year saw him branded a ‘love rat’. Darren recalls, “Saturday matinee, 1999, I was about to go on stage as Cliff in Summer Holiday in Manchester and that day I was the front page of a tabloid as ‘Love Rat’ with my three ‘victims’ – Debbie Gibson, Anna and Andrea Boardman. I was 90 minutes from going on stage! I thought, ‘I can’t go out there now, these people are going to hate me.’ That was the first time I didn’t go on stage sober. That was the beginning of the end.” He had dumped actress Anna, his fiancée, after three years to go public with new girlfriend, Coronation Street star Tracy Shaw. He got engaged to her, then Isla Fisher, Adele Vellacott and Suzanne Shaw – mother of his son Corey.
By 2005, he was homeless. “I was sleeping in a friend’s car – in Hampstead. I’d separated from Suzanne. I’d lost everything. I’d had two houses, one in Chiswick, one in Brighton, a flat, three cars…and by 2006 I was bankrupt.” The following year he married Emmerdale star Stephanie Dooley and had another son and a daughter before divorcing in 2019.
The son of a sales manager and a hairdresser, Darren grew up on Colchester’s tough Greenstead estate. At 13, he became a schoolboy snooker hustler, deliberately fluffing shots to reel in men he’d play for money and fleece. After turning pro, an agent saw him entertaining a crowd with his impressions of other snooker players and convinced him to do it professionally. Day became a Butlin’s redcoat and in 1987, he reached the final of BBC1 talent show, Bob Says Opportunity Knocks, hosted by Bob Monkhouse.
Four years after ITV sacked him, Darren was booked for their first series of I’m a Celebrity… in 2002, eating beans and rice with Uri Geller. Darren went cold turkey to get through it, becoming increasingly erratic, and afterwards went straight back into the drink and drugs cycle. In 2004 he was wrongly diagnosed with depression and put on a concoction of different meds. Day’s eventual saviours were his friend Robbie Williams and his ex, Suzanne Shaw. “I broke down to Robbie on the phone before Christmas 2018. My life had spiralled out of control again. My head was so noisy. He said get yourself through to February and I’ll get my team to sort out rehab for you…That’s what saved me. If it hadn’t been for Robbie I would not be on the planet.
“Then Suzanne called and suggested I got tested for ADHD. I took loads of tests and was diagnosed with ADHD, I was 96 out of 100. They put me on the right pills. It was a game changer. I was in Muriel’s Wedding The Musical and within five days my head was quieter. I learnt lines like I used to. It’s just been amazing. I’m very strong in my sobriety now, and there’s quiet in my head, there’s less chaos. It makes sobriety easier. I don’t feel the need to self-medicate. Everything has changed. In last three months I’ve been in the best place I’ve been in for 25 years. I thank God every day I get up. I love going to work, I love being with my kids, I love speaking spending time with my partner Sophie – we live in Brentwood, Essex, now. I feel like a weight has lifted I’m in a good place and I’m really happy people still want to come and see me. I put everything into what I’m doing.”
He’ll tour as Billy Flynn for eleven weeks. “Going back into Chicago is symbolic. It’s one of my favourite roles. I know some of the cast – I did a guest appearance in November. I was overweight, but I’ve lost three stone since. I’m in such a different place. I’m grateful I’m alive and grateful I’m employed. Life is good.”
*Darren Day stars as Billy Flynn in the UK and Ireland tour of CHICAGO from 9 June chicagothemusical.com
