FROM Celebrity Masterchef direct to Strictly Come Dancing, Matt Dawson goes marching on. As much as any other sportsman in the televised era, the former England rugby union star is embracing the opportunity reality television now routinely supplies for a person to learn life-enhancing skills. Cookery, dancing, ice skating, basic survival in the wild — it’s all out there these days for anyone with the energy, the time and the right agent.

And to think that people habitually pooh-pooh the celebrity challenge format. Clearly it’s as wholesome as scouting, except without the woggles and with an increased chance of bumping into Emma Bunton from the Spice Girls.

Make no mistake, though, Celebrity Masterchef is an entire studio away from the mental and physical rigours of Strictly Come Dancing. If Dawson didn’t know the difference between preparing a thyme-roasted duck leg with sticky onion marmalade and dancing a cha-cha-cha in the white heat of a live Saturday night light entertainment show under the baffled eyes of Bruce Forsyth, he does now.

Obviously, you have to admire any scrum half with the confidence in his own masculinity to wear pink. Not only that, Dawson’s top came with Elvis-style, ceiling-high collars and, in line with a rigorously enforced Strictly Come Dancing ordinance, it had been liberally hosed with sequins until it resembled something from one of Barbie’s more shamelessly attention-seeking collections.

But that outfit was always going to be a lot to dance up to. Sure enough, as he worked his way stiffly around the floor to a strangely chloroformed version of the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction, Dawson looked less and less like a TV challenge veteran on a roll, and more and more like a recently sucked stick of rock.

The judges simply piled in. “Matt by name, mat by nature,” Len Goodman quipped — and he’s supposed to be the nice one. Craig Revel Horwood — who sounds like he ought to be a stately home, but is, in fact, the self-styled hard man of the ballroom dancing criticism scene — claimed he was “bored to tears — the most boring routine I’ve seen.”

There was no taking into consideration that this was the opening dance of the series — no quarter given at all, in fact, and Dawson appeared to be in big trouble from the off. Fortunately for him, Nicholas Owen, the ITN newsreader, delivered a waltz in which he appeared to be miming the carrying of a heavy tea chest up a staircase and was shown the exit by the public phone vote shortly thereafter, narrowly ahead of a disappointingly confidence-shot Jimmy Tarbuck. Who ever thought they would see a less-than-confident Tarby? But that’s pro-celebrity ballroom for you. It damn near strips a man naked, bar the sequins.

Representing cricket, Mark Ramprakash was, by contrast, an essay in self-certainty, even to the point of speaking enthusiastically about discovering “the freedom of dancing”, although he was guilty of some controversial hand-clapping during his cha-cha-cha, which divided the judges. He is one to watch, though, and if the Surrey batsman brings to the dancefloor a particularly steely-eyed determination, it is understandable. We all know what this show did for Darren Gough. Shortly after winning it, the Essex bowler was recalled to the England one-day international side.

During his days in the wilderness, Gough must have frequently thought to himself, “What have I got to do to get noticed? Put on a dress and jump up and down?” That, it turned out, was almost exactly what he had to do. Strictly Come Dancing is now officially the most efficient way for a cricketer to place himself under the famously insensitive noses of the England selectors.

It’s not clear with what agenda, if any, Peter Schmeichel comes into the competition, but he is, thus far, the biggest surprise. I had always appreciated that the former Manchester United goalkeeper was a tall man, in excess of six feet high. What I hadn’t realised, until he stood next to a stick-thin, tinsel-wrapped professional dancer, is that the Dane is also in excess of six feet wide.

The problems of scale that beset David Seaman in Dancing On Ice, where he never quite got round looking like his partner’s dad, seemed likely to rear up again here, and there appeared to be about as much chance of Schmeichel achieving the smooth “rise and fall” required for a graceful waltz as there was of a fully-laden, ocean-going cargo ship doing a handbrake turn.

In fact, Schmeichel pulled a performance of rare smoothness out of the bag, which left Arlene Phillips complimenting him on some superb “heel-leads” and Bruno Tonioli referring effusively to “the great, majestic Dane”. Can he go all the way? I’m not sure, but it looks set to be a truly educational journey, wherever it ends up — and not just for Schmeichel, but for all of us.

Giles Smith returns on Thursday