Strictly Come Dancing's Tom Chambers talks ahead of Crazy For You role at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre

By the time the curtain came down on a production of Crazy For You in the early 1990s, the then-15-year-old Tom Chambers knew his heart lay in performing. “It was the very first live musical I ever saw on stage and it just filled me with so much entertainment and wonder. It was amazing to see what they did with the theatre space and how the story was told. It was the only bit of theatre which truly inspired me.”

In a career which has featured a number of crazy twists of fate as well as some fantastic roles, Tom is relishing the chance to recapture that teenage dream and play the lead role in the production, which plays Wolverhampton Grand Theatre from Tuesday until May 12.

He plays Bobby, a banker sent to close down a failing theatre who falls for the daughter of the building’s proprietor. Determined to win her heart, he adopts the guise of a Hungarian impresario in order to save the theatre and win her heart.

And so, the stage is set for an all-singing, all-dancing story set to a Gershwin soundtrack which includes the likes of They Can’t Take That Away From Me, Bidin’ My Time and, of course, I’ve Got Rhythm.

Tom admits he had always has a bit of a performing instinct from rattling his feet on the kitchen floor at home from a very young age, and then enjoying watching black-and-white films starring the likes of Gene Kelly, but it was a school play that saw him tread the boards for the first time.

He laughs: “I was playing football during a school break and the English teacher, who was directing the play, said no one had auditioned for it so there was a compulsory three o’clock audition. I ended up getting the title role in Dracula Spectacular. I loved that relationship recognition between the audience and I. It was fantastic making them respond.”

Drama school followed which included a stint understudying Keith Chegwin in the pantomime Cinderella at Basingstoke (“It is one of my claims to fame”), and his first job after leaving was a Spanish TV ad for Kit Kat. Tom says: “I thought this is great. I am going to get non-stop work,” but things did not quite work out like that. He had to turn down a role in The Bill because they needed an HGV driver although Tom has now got his Class One lorry-driving licence in common with Chris Eubank.

And when he turned down a role in the arena tour of Bob The Builder, his agent fired him leaving him in a quandary about what to do next. He enjoyed some success with the movie Fakers which was privately financed and enjoyed a limited cinema release but the work was drying up.

So, he took one final shot at success by aiming to get onto the Royal Variety Performance in the days before Britain’s Got Talent and YouTube. He said: “I wrote a Dear John letter suggesting I do a Fred Astaire routine on a drum kit and I thought that might appeal with me tap dancing and kicking drums at the same time. They said get it ready and I spent nine-and-a-half months doing just that. A few weeks beforehand, they then got in touch and said we now have everyone we need. We don’t want you, which was a blow.

“So I got in touch with my old school and asked if I could perform it on their stage in the holidays and I got it filmed in black and white. I had 1,000 DVDs made of it sending 400 to America and sent 600 out in this country to theatre owners, directors and TV producers asking if they were doing anything connected to Fred Astaire and, if so, could I have a chat?”

Only two people came back. One was a theatre producer organising a one-night Fred and Ginger tribute, while Tom said the other was an audition for BBC medical drama Holby City. “The producers just thought it was so unusual. They were looking for someone to play an American doctor for two episodes. As Fred Astaire was American, they thought I was too and wanted to get me in. I went to the audition and they said ‘where have you been all these years?”

From there he won the part of Sam Strachan in the hit sister show to Casualty staying in the role for three years as the fiercely driven doctor who also had a bit of a roving eye.

And it was his role on there that led him into Strictly Come Dancing where he partnered Camilla Dallerup winning the coveted glitterball. Looking back on his time on the Saturday night TV hit, he admits a lot of it is a blur. Tom explains: “People ask if I can do a quick step or a samba. I have to explain that I had a five-day intense work out on each of those routines. It is such a quick short-term memory injection and that is it. It was a bit like doing a marathon. You do step-by-step doing a couple of miles at a time and you look back and you don’t know how you did it. It is the same with Strictly. Your body naturally gets used to physical exertion and a daily work out but it is the brain that suffers most because of trepidation, fear and anxiety. You are just learning so much. You just go in front of the cameras and the audience and give it your all. I look back now. If I watch anything online of one of our dances, I am looking at it as if I am watching someone else. At the time, you are performing, your brain is just in flight mode.”

And now it is Crazy For You which is set to take up the rest of his year. “I think Crazy For You has the absolutely perfect balance of humour, story and singing. There are so many musicals that are heavy on just one element but this show has the perfect combination of everything. It is a bit like the show dance on Strictly with everything slotting into place in the right order.”