Celebrity phone interviews are to journos what boil-in-the-bag noodles are to Michelin chefs. You do them if you have to but it always feels just WRONG.

Unless you’re interviewing Anton du Beke, that is. He is so jolly and chatty I feel I could be in the room with him as he apologises for trying to talk and take off his coat at the same time.

Anton is about to go into the studio to practise for his That’s Entertainment! show, where he and dance partner Erin Boag will show off their latest moves, costumes, and interpretations of well-loved songs such as ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’ to their adoring fans at Bournemouth Pavilion on February 8.

Anton loves the Pavilion. Starting with its fabled floor. “It’s a wonderful surface, not just the shape but a lovely ballroom floor, a good size and everything fits in the room,” he enthuses, explaining that all floors are different and even get affected by the weather, getting slippier or stickier with the heat, damp or cold. “If you couldn’t dance well at Bournemouth Pavilion you had no chance,” he says.

He’s referring not only to its worth as a stage and ballroom but also as a venue for the dance competitions he entered over the competition years.

“I’ve done Bournemouth about 300 times,” he says. “There used to be two big competitions here every year.”

Because of this he’s become extremely familiar with the town. “I’ve seen most of what Bournemouth has to offer and I like it; it’s a lovely town, although there are too many hills!” he says.

He also loves it because it is a great place for dancers amateur and professional, and it shows in the audience.

“People (in Bournemouth) know their dance and it’s because you have somewhere to do it,” he explains.

“The problem with most towns is that there’s nowhere else to dance, unless they clear out the town hall or something.”

With our renowned Pavilion Ballroom we have ‘a wonderful set up’: “You don’t want to go into a studio in a gym to do ballroom dancing because it doesn’t feel right.”

Anton, however, does go to gyms as part of his general fitness but even he now uses a trainer. “I need help when I’m going to the gym,” he says. “I need to work with someone because sometimes it’s like pushing a small piano up a hill.”

He and Erin also call in assistance when planning their routines. Two decades of dancing together means, he says, that they pretty much know what they will do together.

“What an outsider suggests may be normal for them but it is different for us and helps us grow,” he says. “It helps us move on.”

Not that his audience would mind. Thanks to Strictly, Anton has become a major celeb and fans can’t get enough of him, Erin, and the wonderful medium of dance, which brings so much joy to participants’ lives.

It has enabled him to work with a host of female celebs, including Dame Esther Rantzen ‘she’s wonderful’, Patsy Palmer, Kate Garraway, Gillian Taylforth, Laila Rouass, Nancy Dell’Olio, Jerry Hall, Anne Widdecombe (the Prime Minister was said to tune in to watch that), as well as, most recently, Judy Murray, mum of Andy.

“From the first week she was tremendous,” he recalls. “She had a great sense of humour and a wonderful way about her and she is a bit like me – she wanted to be a bit mischievous.”

Anton won’t say who his favourite partner has been but there is one lady he would love to take to the floor with.

“I would love to dance with Her Majesty the Queen,” he declares. “Probably not the tango, obviously, maybe a waltz or a slow foxtrot.”

He and Erin once did a turn around the Buck House ballroom for the services charity Not Forgotten, which they both support.

Is Her Maj’s ballroom good?

“It’s an absolute beauty,” he says. Before the performance he and Erin were in the building and she ‘slipped off into one of the rooms’.

“From a kind of secret passage this Secret Service chappie suddenly stepped out and asked if he could help her! She told him she was just looking,” he laughs.

He chatters on, about the show and his enthusiasm for dancing, which is still undimmed.

I tell him I’ve always assumed he danced everywhere, even in the supermarket. “Oh yes, I might have a little twirl,” he admits. “I waltz a lot in ordinary life.”

l That’s Entertainment! The Pavilion, Bournemouth February 8 bhlivetickets.co.uk