Strictly star Kelvin Fletcher took ballet lessons as a child before acting career took off

24 September 2019, 08:56 | Updated: 24 September 2019, 13:39

By Mared Parry

@maredparry

The former soap actor blew everyone away on Saturday night with his sizzling hot Samba.

Kelvin Fletcher has quadrupled his fanbase following Saturday night's Strictly Come Dancing episode after his steamy Samba had women everywhere feeling flustered.

The 35-year-old racing driver and former Emmerdale actor danced to La Vida Es Un Carnaval by Celia Cruz with his professional partner Oti Mabuse and topped the leaderboard gaining a whopping EIGHT points from judges in the first round.

READ MORE: Who is Kelvin Fletcher? Strictly star who replaced Jamie Laing in the 2019 lineup

Fans of the show were blown away with Kelvin's ability to shake his hips, but it might come as no surprise that the hunk has plenty of practice on the dancefloor, having taken ballet classes as a youngster.

He previously told The Sun Online prior to signing up for Strictly that he had no dancing experience, stating: "My experience of dancing is exclusively at weddings or parties with alcohol involved and in the dark…!"

The star - who played Andy Sugden on the ITV soap for 20 years, ending his stint in 2016 - opened up to Attitude magazine about homopobic jibes he was subject to before his TV fame, despite him being straight.

He was called a "poof", which is a homophobic slur for a gay man prior to Emmerdale fame because of his interest in ballet dancing.

Kelvin explained: "Yeah I had the poof thing before the acting because I did ballet.

"I was eight years old and I was playing rugby for my local club.

"I was having trials for my town team, but Tuesday I was doing 'good toes, naughty toes.' I was always like that."

View this post on Instagram

When you don’t know what a Samba is.... “right” 😳😬🕺🏻🎉 #strictly @bbcstrictly @otimabuse

A post shared by Kelvin Fletcher (@kelvin_fletcher) on Sep 17, 2019 at 3:50pm PDT

The star continued: "I always liked dancing and you'd go to class and find you had an hour acting and an hour of ballet.

"I didn't mind the poofter jibes."

Kelvin's one of the favourites to win this year's Strictly following his impressive first dance, he even had professional dancer Kevin Clifton admitting he could learn a thing or two from him.

We'll definitely be tuning in again on Saturday night to see what he gets up to.