Ready for another reality TV song and dance? Hot Gossip creator Arlene Philips and Striclty Come Dancing judge Bruno Toniolo, plus host Ben Shephard, certainly are. Viv Hardwick reports.

GMTV presenter Ben Shephard hides a dark secret - the host of the latest reality TV contest show, DanceX, actually has a degree in dance. This little-known fact about the 32-year-old turns out to be an ideal qualification for the latest hunt to create an all-singing, all-dancing supergroup.

The former MTV, The Bigger Breakfast and T4 presenter admits he became a dance student purely by accident. "I thought I'd applied to do a drama and dance combined honours with sport and recreation management at university," he explains, adding that he wanted to be an actor and loved playing football, so it seemed a sensible option.

"For the audition I'd been asked to wear a leotard and tights which I didn't have, so I turned up in dirty shorts and a rugby vest. It was me and 16 girls. I always quite liked dancing in nightclubs, so I thought, why not give it a go?

"I met the lecturers and they said, 'Have you ever danced before?' I said, 'No, genuinely I haven't. I really didn't think I was coming to a dance course'. They said, 'Would you like to do the course? You have to be totally committed', and I said yes," he chuckles. "I really enjoyed the audition - it was quite fun. And the male-female ratio was very appealing."

Shephard decided to enrol in the course, thinking he'd give up on the dance side of it pretty quickly, but that wasn't the case.

"By Christmas I'd dropped sport because it was so boring, and I was just doing the dance," he laughs. "I absolutely loved it. It was much more contemporary dance, physical theatre. The only way I knew how to describe it to my friends was kind of like ballet, but a little bit freer.

"I never did get a leotard. They always insisted that I should, but I got some old school Adidas tracksuit bottoms that were a bit tight and that sufficed,"

He's adamant he'll be leaving the steps to the contestants, much to the disappointment of his wife Annie. "My disclaimer is I've got children now so I dance like a dad, so I'm not allowed," he grins.

"I met my wife at university, and I found out recently that she used to find it really attractive watching me dance - it was different to anything she was used to seeing. I think she misses it more than I do."

NEVERtheless, Shephard hopes their two sons inherit the fancy footwork genes.

"For the sake of them pulling birds, absolutely," Shephard smiles. "Sam is very cool at the moment and has some moves - and he's only two. Jack, who is five months old, is very good at throwing up on himself. But I've still pulled the birds doing that in the past,"

Dance X sees Strictly Come Dancing judges Arlene Phillips and Bruno Tonioli as mentors. The show has a similar format to The X Factor with Arlene and Bruno selecting their own groups of contestants, but of course we have to sit through the essential footage of terrible dancers.

"I have so much respect for anyone - good or bad, no matter what they look like - to get up and go and do it. The ones who aren't great I love even more. I think, fair play to you.

"It's not like singing where you think you can sort of do it. You know if you're a rubbish dancer. We all know if we've got natural rhythm. It's a much more exposed medium, dance. Some have a lot more front than ability," he says of the contestants who have made it through.

"I was watching Amy Winehouse at Glastonbury on TV and she had two backing vocalists - they were so cool and they were doing nothing at all, just side-steps. It was the simplest move with a little bit of flair and style. So I was there with my son saying, 'Come on Sam,' and we were trying to copy these two guys. Of course, he's two, so he just kind of span round,"

On the biting comments expected for those who fail to impress, Shephard says: "I think one of things about this sort of industry is you have to get used very quickly to rejection. You see how hard Bruno and Arlene are with some of the people, but they're actually holding back. In real dance auditions they can be even harsher."

For Shephard, hosting the show means achieving a lifetime ambition - appearing on Saturday night, primetime BBC1.

"I feel like someone's going to pinch me at some point and say, 'We were only joking, Graham Norton's going to come and do this one. He's had a few weeks off,'

"It's very daunting in a way, because you think about the rich history of light entertainment, the sort of stuff I watched as a kid, the sort of stuff I still watch now," he admits. "It doesn't feel real."

* DanceX is on BBC1, Saturday, 6.55pm.