Darren Day hasn’t quite managed to escape his bad boy image in the past 12 months but he chats happily to Viv Hardwick about headline stardom at Billingham.

JUST as wife Stephanie Dooley pops a picked onion in her mouth, Darren Day begins to speculate about his ability to have eaten a kangaroo’s testicle while filming the debut TV series of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. It can only be the pantomime season.

As Dooley rolls her eyes and puts a hand over her mouth and says: “I’ve just crunched into this picked onion”, Day breaks off from discussing stardom in Billingham Forum’s Goldilocks And The Three Bears to joke: “I bet that’s what they taste like you know, but it’s all liquid inside.”

The fact that Dooley, who plays Golidlocks to Day’s Prince, laughs off the incident is a good indication as to why she’s the only one of the performer’s six fiancees to reach the marriage altar.

Her 40-year-old husband looks as relaxed as always as he reveals that he isn’t watching the current I’m A Celebrity series and comments: “It doesn’t bring back incredibly happy memories so we haven’t been watching it. I did a couple of physically demanding challenges and I rose to that kind of thing but when you’ve got a kangaroo’s testicle in your mouth I’m not sure I’d have found it so easy.”

The past 12 months looked like it was going to be the year that Day finally out-grew his love rat image and blossomed into the kind of family man which would match his showbiz success.

After all, daughter, Madison, is now two and has reached an age where she can watch daddy play handsome prince to mum’s Goldilocks.

Sadly, Day’s drink-driving ban in August brought back all the bad boy headlines and tales of excess that have haunted his career since the Nineties.

He says: “I remember when Steph and I walked up to the court on the day there were something like 20 paps there and I went ‘where have you lot been for the last couple of years?.

It’s only because I’m back in trouble that you’re here to take my picture again’.

“I think what sums it up is that we were in London Zoo a few months ago. I was with Steph and my three children (Madison, Jordan, Dooley’s son from a previous relationship, and Corey, the child that Day had with previous girlfriend Suzanne Shaw) and I saw a paparazzi guy who made a lot of money out of me by taking pictures in the past. He took good shots of me doing crazy stuff.

“I went to buy an ice cream and he came running over to me and said ‘Darren, Darren, who are you here with?’ and I said ‘I’m here with me wife and children’ and he went ‘oh right’ and dropped his camera and went off.

Obviously, he was hoping that I’d be there with someone that I shouldn’t be with. They don’t want to write about the other me, that doesn’t fit my image.

“Now, I’m daddy and husband and I love being that. If being in the papers means doing the stuff I used to I’d much rather be out of it.”

One worry that Day doesn’t have at the moment is earning a living. Having come through a very public bankruptcy in 2006, the singer, actor and impressionist helped Billingham Forum lift pantomime sales for Jack And The Beanstalk that Christmas. Two years on, he’s aware, having starred in ITV’s The Bill and toured in Hello Dolly, that current record ticket sales are partly down to his name and face appearing on the Goldlocks posters.

“I know the credit crunch is affecting everybody, whatever you are and whatever you do, but panto ticket sales are doing well. It would be nice to think so (it was partly due to him). People like Ken Morley (who plays Dame Tilly) was a major part of one of Britain’s biggest soaps and has put a lot of bums on seats, but we did have a great time two years ago and this is an incredibly well run theatre. So it was nice to be asked to come back,” he says.

In fact Day rates Morley as a Dame who is a cross between Les Dawson and Dick Emery, which is high praise indeed.

Dooley, best-known as saucy temptress Zara Baynard in ITV1’s Emmerdale, confirms that neither of them has appeared in Goldilocks before and that the second half circus scenes are a vital part of the show’s entertainment.

Day adds: “The guy, Robert Fox, is one of the acrobats and he’ll fly across the audience on a trapeze and I’ve worked with before in Halifax and he’s amazing. Some of the animal acts are great and this has become like a variety show within a pantomime. So you’ve got more than the average pantomime.”

His daughter Madison was just six weeks old last time the couple came to Billingham and he says: “For her to see her mum play Goldilocks is going to be something special for her. We’re really lucky Steph’s parents like looking after the kids because it would be really difficult for us to bring in a nanny and leave them with someone they don’t really know.”

Bravely, Day says he might put a joke at his own expense in the show.

On the driving conviction he says: “It was irresponsible of me and if you make a mistake in life you put your hands up to it. Listen, in life you can’t take yourself too seriously and if someone on stage wants to have a joke at my expense it doesn’t really worry me. I’ve known other performers like The Patton Brothers since before I got the role of Joseph. That was back in 1985 when we were working in Bournemouth and I was supporting Jimmy Cricket in my very early days. It was around the time I auditioned for Opportunity Knocks.

“So if I’m appearing alongside these guys, then I must be doing something right.”

Next year. both Day and Dooley are hoping to break through into TV drama.

“Steph and I are with the same agent and they are brilliant.

We’ll see if they can make anything happen for us,” says Day, who jokes that he hasn’t got the waistline any more for a ninth appearance in the loincloth of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

“I’m 40 you know and I realise that Donny Osmond still did it at 40, but he maybe aged a little bit better that I have. You have got to move on in both your life and career.”

■ Goldilocks And The Three Bears runs from Saturday until January 4. Box Office: 01642- 552663.

■ The Patton Brothers, who play The Brokers Men and work regularly with their TV star siblings, The Chuckle Brothers, have more family celebrations thanks to pantomime. Jimmy and Brian haven’t missed a panto in 53 years and have now welcomed Brian’s son, Damian, into a panto cast. Damian will be playing Daddy Bear and the innkeeper during the Billingham run.