FAMILY TIME

himself in a pickle, then it’s uncomfortable for anyone the first meeting, you don’t really know what to say. “No one has died, but you feel for your mate going through a sticky patch. People were hurt, I’m not making light of it, but I see the other side of it. You’re there for your mate, at the end of the day.”

It’s perhaps a controversial view, but it fits with his mantra: “I regret things I have not done, rather than things I have.”

It is how he dealt with that spell out of the England squad before his 2007 return. He went on to win the Ashes three times and ranked among the world’s top three bowlers. “The reason you do things and experience everything is to shape the person you’re going to be,” Graeme says. “No one got hurt, so I wouldn’t change a thing.

“Some bits were quite painful, people always say, ‘You missed out on seven years of cricket’. I don’t think I did.”

But he adds of Seann’s exploits: “I can’t think of anything worse than getting embroiled in something like that. That’s not for me.”

Plus, he’s clearly besotted with Sarah and their children Wilfred, seven, Charlotte, five, and Jessica, two.

Graeme travels from home in Nottinghamshire to London to train with

Oti, and is struggling with seeing so little of them.

He had to return to cricket tours days after the births of his eldest two children, and spent long periods away. But he says: “It’s been a lot harder balancing a family and Strictly than I thought it would be.” It might explain why he cried after making it through the second show, after the judges’ low scores. “It took me by surprise, I felt a right plonker,” he chuckles. “I was having a soppy moment. The relief of getting through does weird things to you.” Yet still no sledging. “Everyone has been so supportive, I’ve been taken aback by it.” So bring on more camp dancing? “I don’t mind that. I’m very comfortable in myself,” he says. Even if there is slightly less of him than before.