ONCE he made Cher and Demi Moore wince and left Steve Martin distraught by asking him why he wasn't funny any more. Now Paul Kaye feels discomfort himself when he reflects on his mid-Nineties days as celebrity menace Dennis Pennis.

He regrets much of his garish alter ego's behaviour.

"I kind of cringe at a lot of that, to be honest with you. I always liked the idea of doing Pennis a lot more than actually doing it. That was the closest I came to pressing the self-destruct button, because I look back at the Pennis stuff and think I was p****d the whole time I did it."

Dennis Pennis was his first acting job. "I had no intentions of performing, I just sort of fell into it. It was like punk rock telly, no make-up, no wardrobe. It was just me and my mate doing our thing," he recalls.

Kaye re-emerges this weekend in the new British mockumentary It's All Gone Pete Tong, filmed in the clubs and bars of Ibiza. He plays Frankie Wilde, a dance DJ whose high-decibel, hedonistic lifestyle costs him his hearing.

Kaye may turn 40 this year and his clubbing days have joined Pennis on the history spike, but wild Frankie was exactly the kind of role he wanted to prove his diversity. "I didn't think anyone could do this as good as me. Without sounding arrogant, I had been looking for a job like this for a while. It was absolutely the right time for me; coming up to 40, I needed to get a lot off my chest and I still had a lot of energy," he says.

Nevertheless, keeping pace with the clubbers on one of the hottest summers on record was a challenge.

"It was pandemonium! It was like being surrounded by nine-and-a-half thousand pill-munching maniacs in 43 degrees, so the sweat was real. All the club scenes were filmed for real. Just to be able to work in that environment, not being able to hear, it was complete chaos," Kaye says.

His role model for his self-destructive character was The Who's drummer Keith Moon.

"I read his autobiography before I started filming. It was such a desperate story and a very depressing read. He was a family man, but everyone just remembers him as the ultimate rock'n'roll star, and behind that there was so much sadness and tragedy.

"His story isn't a celebration of the hedonistic lifestyle. The lows far outstrip the highs by the end of it all - and that was Frankie too."

Now Kaye would love to do more straight roles.

"I haven't really had the roles I've been qualified to do. I think people haven't been sure what to do with me really," he says. "I'd like to think I've taken a few risks in my career, but I've never known what I'm going to do next. I've actually spent a lot of time in the last three or four years not working, but I'm also lazy, so that's probably why I haven't."

Updated: 16:51 Thursday, May 26, 2005