As the line-up for the third I'm a Celebrity is announced, Nick Morrison talks to one of the stars of the last series about fame, returning tio the North-East, and dancing with Diana.

WAYNE Sleep is a busy chap. It's just before Christmas and he's at the London Palladium to prepare for the evening's performance as the Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, having come from a dress rehearsal for Cinderella at Covent Garden, where he plays one of the Ugly Sisters.

He's going to alternate the two, playing a total of eight performances a week.

"It is a hectic time, but it has been like that all my life," he says. "I'm running from one theatre to the other and I'm going to get my hair cut after this."

Sleep, now 55, may have had a busy working life, but it was only last year that he re-entered public consciousness on a large scale after several years, if not out of the limelight altogether, then certainly of keeping a lower profile. The reason for this re-emergence was his appearance in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! last year, when he finished a creditable fourth.

It is second time around for Sleep, who had a prolonged period of fame in the 1980s, the highlight being his dance with Princess Diana at the Royal Opera House in 1985, to Billy Joel's Uptown Girl. It surprised the Prince of Wales, delighted everyone else, and Sleep became a regular both on television and in the gossip columns.

So, given this renewed attention, it seems reasonable to ask how I'm A Celebrity affected him?

"Celebrity made no difference to my life whatsoever," he says firmly, before adding, "I'm doing a keep fit video because they thought I would be popular enough to sell it." As well as making him more bankable, it seems the jungle survival show has also introduced him to a new audience.

"When I do my workshops around Britain, the little kids know who I am, rather than just the older generation. They can identify with me. Also, I raised £87,000 for my charity", which is the Wayne Sleep Dance Scholarship, aiming to help aspiring dancers with their tuition.

'It was a rewarding experience. I did a lot of thinking when I was out there, and realised we're all different kinds of people, and the people I didn't particularly see eye to eye with were just not of my world. I'm glad to be different."

He says his kind of people have more fun, and it showed in the programme. What kind is this?

"Theatre people. We have more laughter, we have harder work in some ways, we have a feel for the general public. I really enjoy the fact that we have a discipline and we have great rewards from the general public, who applaud every night. It makes you think how lucky you are to be doing what you are doing."

It was this bond he shared with former EastEnder Danniella Westbrook which made them jungle-mates, until Westbrook's premature exit.

"We see the funny side of everything, in a theatrical way," says Sleep. "Our careers are so hard. She has had to learn scripts all her life; I have had this career where it is like walking a tightrope. We had a sense of humour which was second to none.

"I think it is this discipline, and the manners you learn in theatre - never to try and upstage people. Some of the others didn't have that," he says, although he's not saying who he has in mind.

"I kept my mind on my charity and just came over as honest. I didn't try and play a game; I didn't want to cross paths with anybody, but when things were wrong I said so. I'm an entertainer, and I tried my best to have a laugh and have fun."

Despite their friendship, he's not in touch with Westbrook now. "I'm so busy, I haven't had time to turn around. I'm doing eight shows a week," he says.

He says his absence from our screens is because there aren't any dance shows on television now, nor are there the variety shows which gave him a regular platform in the 1980s.

"What was I supposed to do, go on all the quiz shows every week? Then you look like you are just being a celebrity," he says, with ill-disguised distaste for the idea. But just because he hasn't been on television, it doesn't mean he hasn't been busy.

"I have worked consistently all the way through, I haven't stopped. I like choreography and I'm doing all that sort of stuff, and directing and looking after my charity. I do these big galas in London and all that takes up so much time."

The advantage of fame, of course, is it helps promote his shows, but he says he didn't want to be known just as a celebrity and was glad when his profile waned.

"At first, I was very much happier, because I had had enough. My association with Princess Diana put me right in the media's eye when I was not really ready for it. I didn't really enjoy that; I don't think anybody does. I got rather upset about it, and I thought if I stayed out of the media, they will leave me alone."

The downside of this approach is the understandably frustrating assumption that if you're not on television you can't be doing anything worthwhile.

Or even anything at all, which must be especially galling for someone as recognisable as 5ft two-and-a-quarter inch Sleep. "Every taxi driver thinks you have not worked since," he says, in what is obviously a remark born of a thousand painful journeys.

Being away from the media means Sleep has been able to do what he wanted, pick and choose his projects, instead of being driven by the need to maintain a public image. But, second time around, he feels fame will be easier to manage.

"I used to have people hanging around my doorstep, and I used to go clubbing with Freddie Mercury and the boys, but I have matured a lot and I can handle things better. Now I do what I want to do.

"I have been lucky enough to choose things that I want to do and I have always created my own work, and that is why I have never stopped working. If I waited for the phone to ring, it never would."

When he does take a break, he likes to travel, and most of all he wants to enjoy himself. "I hate to think that I'm never going to see what I want to see. I have never been to Russia, and those were the dancers that really impressed me. It's mad that I have never been.

"I just put laughter as a priority in my life. If I don't laugh twice a day, there must be something wrong with me," he says, which seems as good a recipe as any other.

He still goes back to Hartlepool occasionally, to look at the house where he lived from the age of five until he won a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School at 13. He likes to go to the seafront and reminisce, about his days at the Muriel Carr School of Dancing, about going to Newcastle twice a week for lessons, and tournaments in Middlesbrough and South Shields, as well as going to evangelical meetings with two guys from the Church Army. "It is all my youth," he says.

After this spot of nostalgia, he moves on to lament the way dance is treated by television, either ignored altogether or limited to contemporary dance, "sometimes so off the wall, it is very difficult for kids to enjoy", he sighs.

"When I was a kid, every variety show had its own set of dancers. It saddens me there is not much work in this country so they have to go abroad."

So what can be done? "They have Pop Idol, why don't they have Dance Idol?," he says, and perhaps it shows just how deeply these reality shows have become embedded in our sense of what makes popular culture that even Sleep seems to swear by them. Or perhaps he's being sarcastic.

But now it's time for that haircut and then into costume as the Childcatcher, which gives him a rare chance to be a villain. "It doesn't seem the right casting until you come and see me. I love it; I love being evil," he says gleefully, although somehow that seems hard to believe.

* Workout with Wayne (Universal Pictures Video).