Absolutely anyone can win Strictly... I’m the proof! The audience loves to see you sweat so just make sure you put in a shift

IT

started with a fun, red carpet launch and 15 hopefuls full of giddy enthusiasm and often misplaced confidence in their dancing abilities.

Along the way there have been snogging scandals, strops and the usual rows about trained dancers and the lack of celebs going on a learning-to-dance “journey”.

But we are now less than a month away from the Strictly grand finale. And next Saturday the hot half-dozen survivors will take to the dance floor for the quarter-final.

Whatever the controversies and concerns, Joe McFadden, the reigning glitterball champion, says he has no worries.

“The right person will win it,” insists Joe, 43. “Because it’s the person the people who vote want to win.

“If it’s Ashley Roberts, who has dance experience, that’s just fine. But for me, Joe Sugg is the one to beat. He has a massive following with millions of YouTube followers and that’s a fanbase that’s going to be hard to go up against.

“Joe and Dianne Buswell are a fantastic couple and you can tell they really get on well. She is bringing out the best in him. It’s lovely to see that she’s got someone she could potentially win the show with.”

Former Holby City star Joe went all the way to the 2017 final with Katya Jones and came out on top against Debbie McGee, Gemma Atkinson and Alexandra Burke.

When he started, he was a real rookie and had to put in endless hours in the training room to master the steps and the complicated routines that culminated in a now-famous cantilever lift.

And, sitting down and watching each week as he does with something of an experienced eye, he empathises with those following in his dancing footsteps.

“I do relate to someone like Stacey (Dooley), who has had no dance training,” says Joe, who is one of the stars on this week’s Celebrity Antiques Road Trip.

“She was always capable, but she wasn’t brilliant in the beginning.

“She has got better and better each week, and hopefully that’s what I did.

“Then I look at Faye Tozer, who is brilliant each week but is still getting better.

“So I can see why she’s in the show, why the producers have given her the job. You need it to be entertaining from the start.

“I think it’s a British thing that you like to see people sweating. You like

Joe McFadden, second right, with Rev Richard Coles and experts David Harper, left, and Philip Serrell on Celebrity Antiques Road Trip. to see them working at maximum effort.

“It’s different in America, when the best dancer wins Dancing With The Stars. Nicole Scherzinger won it there.

“I think any one of them would deserve it. It’s anyone’s guess what’s going to happen.”

With more than 13 million tuning into the final last year, the profile that comes with the biggest show on TV is massive. Joe had gone into it knowing that his Holby character, surgeon Raf Di Lucca, was being killed off and he’d be free to take up other roles.

But while it seems as if the offers didn’t flood in as might have been expected, Joe reveals that wasn’t the case.

“I have been offered quite a bit of work but I just didn’t want to do it.

“Coming from Holby and then doing Strictly, I wanted the

▼