Vincent Simone talks to Viv Hardwick about Strictly and his new show, Midnight Tango, and offers some surprising advice to his son.

LIKE any red-bloodied male, when offered the chance to talk to the stars of new touring show Midnight Tango, I opted to interview the sizzling Flavia Cacace. So it came as something of a surprise when an email arrived offering a chat, with just minutes to spare, with dance partner Vincent Simone.

Mentally, the reaction was akin to swallowing a red rose I would love to have had clenched between my teeth.

Still, 32-year-old Simone has enjoyed his own headline-hitting steps into the lusty world of love on and off the dance floor of BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing, including an affair with Russian dancer Kristina Rihanoff.

Now, he’s back with his partner, Susan Duddy – the mother of the couple’s small son, Luca – and ready to joke about his Strictly nickname of the Italian Stallion.

“I think that calling me that was a lovely thing. I think each of us professionals has our own personality and I feel I’m one of the most entertaining dancers,” Simone says.

On his lovelife making the national media, he admits it was a shock because he’d felt he and Cacace were just dancers who had focused on winning titles.

“Then you go on TV and find yourselves in the papers. Now, we understand why it happens because so many people know who we are and I suppose that it’s the price we have to pay. We also understand how the newspapers work and the BBC has a press office and ensures that we are more prepared,” he says.

“Fans do want to know about us and I know they like to hear about my son or ‘the little sausage roll’ as I call him. People like to take pictures of him and that’s okay. At the moment I haven’t got anything to hide so whatever comes out, it it’s pictures of me and my family, in the end it’s a lovely thing,” Simone adds.

So will he and Cacace teach Luca to dance? “I’ll try, but I’ll have to see if he has any talent. I‘d rather he did something else because to go all over again in dance would be too stressful.

So if he has a talent like football player, snooker player or being a gigolo I will be there to help,” he says.

Questioned about how serious he is on that final occupation, Simone jokes back: “Why not, I can give him a few tips.”

Perhaps out feet better move in the direction of creating Midnight Tango.

“We were approached by producer Adam Spiegel who we’d worked with before and suggested that Flavia and I did a show featuring the Argentinean tango. We’d been waiting for someone like him to turn up and we just sat down and he came up with the name and we pulled some ideas together,”

says Simone who worked on the choreography with Cacace and director Karen Bruce.

Star choreographer and former Strictly judge Arlene Phillips came on board as producer and helped create a show which takes the audience to an old-style late-night bar in Buenos Aires and supports the dance pair with counterparts plus actors from Argentina. “Finally it means that Flavia and I can dance full on because, although we love dancing with the celebrities, we never really get the chance to dance properly. So performing like this is a dream,” says the man who, with Cacace took UK, European and World dance titles in ten dance, tango, showdance and ballroom between 2002 and 2006.

“It was Adam’s idea to invite Arelene to get involved and we knew it would work because she gets loads of Press interviews and she loves me and Flavia as dancers and always has done. So it was another way to promote the show. She was over the Moon to be working with us,” adds Simone, who claims that he’s never had a cross word with one of the dance world’s most formidable choreographers and directors.

“She isn’t nice to everyone, which is why people love her, and on Strictly she made harsh comments to the celebrities. But that’s her job, she’s not just there to compliment people, she will point out things that didn’t work properly. The beauty of Midnight Tango is that everyone was in the same frame of mind,” he says.

The show features 30 dance numbers featuring all six couples with Simone and Cacace taking the spotlight four times.

“There is a story behind the dance involving everything that would happen in a Buenos Aires bar. That’s what makes this show so intriguing because it’s not just watching tango after tango. That’s been done. There is an emotional rollercoaster to all this,” says Simone, who is particularly pleased about the live music supplied by Tango Siempre with vocalist Guillermo Rozenthuler.

So is he and Cacace preparing themselves for another Strictly season?

“Yes, we are always prepared because we’ve been doing this for six years. But we won’t find out if we are involved until this month. Fingers crossed we are involved because we love doing it.

“It’s about time that either of us had had a win. I’d like both me and Flavia to be in the final. Some people say it’s a dancing show and some say it’s a personality show but, sometimes, you are partnered with somebody good but you don’t win. Sometimes you end up with Ann Widdecombe and get to the semifinal.

“My first partner was Rachel Stevens and, being a singer, she knew how to move in time with the music.

She should have won, but we didn’t,”

he says about finishing second to Tom Chambers and Camilla Dallerup.

• Midnight Tango, Sunderland Empire, Tuesday-Saturday. Tickets: £14.50-£36.50. Box Office: 0844-847- 2499 sunderlandempire.org.uk