A drag queen on a bus? That’s so easy after scary Strictly!

Soap star Joe Mcfadden was the dance show champ but, he tells Simon Button, a stage musical is less stressful

COMPARED to Strictly Come Dancing, starring in Priscilla, Queen Ofthe Desert is a walk in the park for Joe Mcfadden – albeit one in high heels. “The singing, the harmonies, the dancing, the heels, the drag... they’re all challenging,” says Joe, 43. “But there is far less terror with Priscilla than there was when I was competing in Strictly.”

The Glasgow-born actor, who waltzed his way to victory in 2017, goes on: “Nothing will ever compare to the fear you feel going out and doing a ballroom dance routine each week, having spent three and a half days learning it and then getting judged by the professionals who don’t miss a thing...”

Not that playing a drag queen in the stage version of the hit

1994 film came easy.the first shows on the Priscilla tour were daunting, Joe admits, but as the nine-month tour progresses he says “I’m having a blast.”

Mcfadden plays Tick, a gay entertainer who performs as his drag alter ego Mitzi Mitosis in a

Sydney bar, gets an invitation to put on a show in Alice Springs and sets off with two fellow drag artistes aboard a bus they nickname Priscilla.

Cue a discofied soundtrack that takes in everything from Hot Stuff to It’s Raining Men, big dance numbers and some very quick costume changes that see Joe “switching from being a man to a drag queen sometimes in about 40 seconds”.

He smiles broadly – something he does throughout the interview – as he admits: “Those first shows were a bit hairy but it’s already old hat now.touch wood, I haven’t put the wrong costume on yet but I’ve come very close to being late back on stage...”

Best known for playing PC Joe Mason on Heartbeat and surgeon Raf di Lucca on Holby City, Mcfadden has never done drag before. “I always imagined I wouldn’t be very pretty as a woman,” he says, “but when we did the photoshoot for the poster I was nicely surprised.”

He mastered the heels by wearing them around his London home. “I was walking around the house doing the cleaning in heels and going up and down the stairs, just to get used to them,” he laughs. “It gets easier, although if you have a couple of days off and put them on again it’s like ‘God, where’s my balance?’

“I’ve also got a bad neck at the moment because of how heavy the headdresses are and I have to use heat pads.your body does take a bit of a punishing but again it’s nothing like Strictly. Every week it was something else – everything from my back to my neck to my hip flexors – because you’re doing the same movement hundreds of times.

“The good thing is when you move on to the next dance that part of your body gets time to heal.” He laughs again and adds: “You just end up injuring something somewhere else.” Originating, just like the film, in Australia, the stage version of Priscilla premiered in Sydney in 2006 and made it to thewest End three years later with Jason Donovan playingtick. This time around Donovan is producing the tour.

Joe confesses to having had Jason’s smash hit albumten Good Reasons on repeat play on hiswalkman when it came out in 1989. Has he told Donovan that? “I haven’t, actually, but I don’t think it’d be much of a surprise as everyone was listening to it at the time.”

Joe is also a fan of Jason’s skill as a producer. “He’s been really supportive and he’s so encouraging. To have his seal of approval means so much because he was in the show on and off for five years and he’s said nothing but nice things about my Australian accent.”

Offstage Joe talks in his native Scottish burr but he can relate totick, whom he describes as someone who is in a rut and in need of a life change. “I’ve been a bit like that myself in the past,” admits the man who called Holby

City home for nearly four years.

Joe has been acting since he was 12 when a drama teacher helped him get a part ontaggart. His CV runs from Scottish soap Take The

High Road to Heartbeat,