The soldier accused of passing military secrets to Iran is a salsa-dancing former nightclub owner, it emerged yesterday.

Corporal Daniel James, 44, of Iranian descent, has been in the Territorial Army for up to 20 years and has served in Northern Ireland.

However, in recent years when not deployed on operations as a TA member, he was a director of a company that ran a nightclub in Brighton.

Ten years ago he changed his name, swapping his Persian surname for the more English-sounding Daniel James.

Corporal James was educated in Iran until the age of 16, when he came to Britain, an associate said. His mother, who does not speak English, is believed to spend most of her time in Iran. His father is dead.

Corporal James has married once, according to friends, but it did not last long.

Currently on remand charged under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 with communicating information “useful to the enemy”, known by The Times to be Iran, Corporal James was described yesterday as a career TA soldier, not just as a weekend part-timer. He had not served in the regular Army but with his fluency in some of the most sought-after languages, incuding Farsi, Dari and Pashtun, all vital for his role as an interpreter in Afghanistan, his specialist skills were much in demand.

He had been interpreter to Lieutenant-General David Richards, the British Commander of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, for several months.

When in his adopted home town of Brighton, however, he has a different persona. He is known as a muscled dancer called “Danny J”, and for five years ran a late-night venue called Club New York.

He was forced to sell his nightclub last year after clashing with Nicholas van Hoogstraten, the disgraced property tycoon. The nightclub was in a disused church, which friends of Corporal James said Van Hoogstraten owned. They said that he forced Corporal James to sell it last year.

Neighbours who live opposite Corporal James’s £600,000 house overlooking the sea in Brighton said that he was a fit body-builder who had military connections.

Anna Rocks, a 17-year-old student, said: “I have known him since I was a little girl. He is just a nice guy and a good neighbour.

“I knew he was in the Army but I didn’t know that he was of Iranian origin.”

Mike Simmonds, 48, a lighting engineer, said that he was aware that police had recently visited the property. “The forensic guys were here a few days ago,” he said.

His club, near the city centre, held regular salsa evenings. He claimed to have invented a form of exercise that mixed salsa and aerobics.

Between 2000 and 2005 he was the sole director of a company called Club PR Limited, which was used to manage the nightclub and salsa lessons. He resigned from the company in February last year and an Iranian businessman took his place as director a few days later.

In 1998 Corporal James joined Tessa Sanderson, the former javelin champion, and Roger Black, the sprinter, at a health show in London, according to local reports.

Described in the article as a physical trainer with The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, he said: “I hope I get spotted [at the event] and get a job out of it.”

Corporal James bought the individual flats that make up his two-storey house near Roedean school on the outskirts of Brighton in 1999 and 2000.

He rents out the top two floors to tenants and lives in the ground-floor property. A woman is also registered as a voter in his flat, but she could not be contacted yesterday.

At a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, most of which was held in secret, Corporal James made no application for bail and was remanded in custody until December 27.

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