If Matt Dawson lives the dream and beats Mark Ramprakash to the Strictly Come Dancing title this weekend, it will complete what is surely one of the most remarkable personal transformations in the history of pro-celebrity ballroom in the televised era.

The very idea that the former England rugby union star would stand within touching distance of the coveted silverware, having seen off Emma Bunton in an end-to-end semi-final, would have seemed implausible as little as two months ago.

It’s not that one was surprised to see Dawson competing. People with close experience of the man indicate that the Strictly Come Dancing selectors would not have needed to phone him twice. And even those of us who have never met him can recall how Dawson’s famous decision to turn down an England training weekend to honour a commitment to A Question of Sport amply revealed a man who was ready to go the extra mile where a guaranteed television appearance was concerned.

What is remarkable is the extent to which Dawson has blossomed as a dancer in the 37 weeks since the series began. (I think it’s been 37 weeks. It certainly feels like it.) Uptight initially, the rugby man had to be coaxed into touching his partner with the intimacy that ballroom, like rugby, demands. Amazing to think that the Dawson who so mesmerically held his own — and his partner’s — in a classically executed foxtrot the other night is the same Dawson who, early doors, samba-ed like a fridge freezer in a spangly shirt.

After the foxtrot, Bruno Tonioli, one of the judges, said: “It was like watching Fred and Ginger in The Gay Divorcee.” Ordinarily, if you say that kind of thing to a rugby player on a Saturday night you end up getting chased down the high street by him and several of his team-mates. In this context, though, Dawson could only look on and smile in exhausted satisfaction, knowing that he had just been issued with the ultimate accolade.

Even then, the record books will show that Dawson went on to make it difficult for himself by following up with a low-scoring Argentine tango. Arlene Phillips reckoned this latter routine had “the sex appeal of a gnat”, which seemed, if anything, unfair to gnats. It left Dawson below Bunton after the judging stage. Yet he was redeemed by the public phone vote, which must say something about the warmth with which people recall England’s World Cup triumph of 2003, as opposed to the warmth with which they recall the Spice Girls.

What a different journey it has been for the man he faces in the final. Intuitively talented and reliably composed, Ramprakash has taken to dancing like he never took to Test cricket. He goes into Saturday as the overwhelming favourite. But, this time last year, so did Colin Jackson, in his head-to-head with Darren Gough. And what happened? The former sprinter and his partner came out with floppy mannequins attached to themselves and produced the biggest sporting choke since Greg Norman set off up the back nine at Augusta in 1996. Dawson to win, then? There have been bigger surprises.

Meanwhile, congratulations to Graeme Le Saux, who, by the time the viewer votes had been counted at the end of Extinct, ITV’s endangered fauna phone-in, had hoisted the Rwandan mountain gorilla into the top three. Unlike the gorilla, Le Saux is only human, so he will probably have been disappointed not to have gone the whole way. But anyone who is up against the giant panda and the Bengal tiger in an extinction face-off is going to know he has been in a fight.

As it happens, it’s the tiger who will enjoy the lion’s share of the raised funds, with the remainder being divvied up equally between the other contending animals. So everyone’s a winner — even Michael Portillo’s hyacinth macaw, which was very much the underdog.

In the circumstances, for “Soxy” to take the gorilla as far as he did, on the resources that he had, can be regarded as a small miracle of survival in itself. Plus a top-three finish presumably guarantees a place in Europe next season, and it’s more years than we care to mention since the mountain gorilla had one of those.