‘Every soap had a villain, and I was the resident’: Neighbours’ Stefan Dennis on Strictly, showbiz and getting the sack

Stefan Dennis joined the cast of Neighbours as Paul Robinson, the git, for its first episode in 1985. He declines to tell me how old he was then. “See,” he says, with a glint of that Paul cunning: “That’s gonna give my age away if I tell you.” If I were to take a guess – looking at him today, in Boxpark in Wembley, pin neat and ready for anything (he could nip to the shops or go clubbing) in a Lacoste polo shirt, leaping on and off high chairs as gracefully as a cat, I would say early 60s. Wikipedia says he is 67 in October. My first and enduring impression is not his age, but the fact that he must, in some bigwig showrunner’s imagination, be this year’s Strictly Come Dancing crown prince. That’s just how it works – there are some irredeemably bad dancers who are fun to watch, there are