How nervous were you before you went out and did that extravagant Cha Cha Cha?
“Incredibly nervous! It was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been. I thought I might be less scared on the Saturday after doing my first routine on the Friday, but if anything I was worse. I mean I’ve lined up for the Grand National, I’ve been in some pretty dodgy positions down the years, I’ve been to the South Pole, so I can’t explain how nerve-wracking Strictly is. Even with all my sports psychology background, I couldn’t calm my nerves.” You’ve done lots of physical challenges in the past. How did Strictly compare? “Physically you can go at it all day, but if you do that then you actually get worse, because mentally you don’t keep up with it. So you do all the physical stuff, but at the end of the day, you can be even more drained mentally. It’s totally different from what I’m used to, where I could go for a run and just get tired physically. Dancing does take it out of your body to a certain extent, but it was the mental side that I never appreciated before. I didn’t realise qu
