Jason Donovan issues 'tragic' 18-month warning and admits he's leaving | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV

Jason Donovan will forever be remembered for the string of cheesy pop hits that emerged from his success on the Australian daytime soap in the 1980s.

But for about 30 years he has been trying to escape this legacy, especially as the star in the leather jacket of the rock'n'roll musical “The Rocky Horror Show”, with which he has been on tour since 1998.

Jason is now middle-aged and believes he has about 18 months before he has to hang up the jacket for good. He told the Daily Telegraph: “I'm 56 and I still look good in leather. I reckon I've got about a year and a half before it looks tragic.”

He says he doesn't quite understand how Rocky Horror's camp humor fits into today's more gender-fluid culture. He continued, “I don't understand the whole woke thing. All I know is that people are buying tons of tickets. And the show hasn't been canceled. I think the continued celebration of otherness in all its forms strikes a nerve.”

The other, less pleasant thing that Jason is famous for is his controversial court case against The Face magazine in 1992. An article in the cool people's style bible claimed that Jason was gay and was hiding the truth from his fans.

He took legal action, resenting being called a liar. He won the case and was awarded £200,000 in damages, with the magazine having to pay a further £100,000 in legal costs. The victory damaged Jason's career, as many viewed his complaint as homophobic.

Jason later admitted that suing The Face was the biggest mistake of his life. He spent several years reinventing himself, rebelling against his squeaky-clean image and trying to emulate his father, actor Terence Donovan, in films.

In general, casting directors were not particularly interested in the soap star, who was best known for his hit song from Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. He said: “I made the wrong choices. But I also became Jason Donovan. That can be bad news for producers who want actors to be someone other than themselves.”

Drug problems – he was carried away on a stretcher from Kate Moss's 21st birthday party at LA's notorious Viper Room club after a cocaine overdose – ruined Jason's life in the 1990s, and he only managed to get clean after receiving an ultimatum from his now-wife Angela Malloch, whom he met backstage on a Rocky Horror tour.

After all his trials and tribulations, Jason is now happy in his own skin: “At the end of the day, I'm just a damn soap star from Oz with a lot of hits,” he says. “I'm not out there saving lives. I'm just making people happy.”