Darren Gough wanders into the lobby of his Newcastle hotel looking bleary-eyed. “I’m in bits,” he says. “I’ve just had a massage to sort me out and that hasn’t nearly done the job. And I’ve got to do it all again tonight. This show is very hard work.”

The show in question is Strictly Come Dancing Live, the touring version of the television programme that Gough won in 2005. Not only does the tour have an exhausting schedule of 39 performances in a month, but Gough has the show’s most gruelling role: he has to perform the Dirty Dancing lift, which involves holding Lilia Kopylova, his dancing partner, above his head with fully extended arms for ten seconds. It sounds like clean-and-jerk weightlifting, but using an 8½-stone dancer instead of a barbell.

“I’m the strongest, so I have to do it,” Gough said. “I’ve had a bet with Len [Goodman, one of the show’s judges]; he reckons that out of 39 shows, I’ll only manage the lift 26 times. Well, I’ve done it six times out of six so far. It was a close-run thing last night, I wobbled a bit, but I pulled it off.”

Perhaps Goodman has not heard the cricket anecdote about Gough’s renowned strength. Asked by a young teammate why he was nicknamed “Rhino”, Gough allegedly replied: “Because I’m as strong as an ox.”

Strutting your stuff in front of 12,000 people is not your average county cricketer’s idea of pre-season training, but that is how the Yorkshire captain treats the tour. “I’m fitter than I’ve been for ages,” he says. After another two performances in Newcastle today, the show moves to Wembley Arena on Friday, then goes around the country for a further three weeks.

The tour is the next step in Gough’s path towards a life beyond cricket. At 37, he is “95 per cent certain” that the coming season, the second in a two-year contract with Yorkshire, will be the last of a remarkable 20-year career. And after that? Gough wants to keep performing and possibly move into television presenting, but is not sure what the future holds.

Step forward Arlene Phillips, one of the show’s judges, who has firm ideas about the direction that Gough could take. “Darren is a natural in front of an audience, he has them eating out of his hand,” she says. “He’ll kill me for saying this, but he could take the lead in a musical. He has a fantastic presence on stage and he’s a big man, but when he’s dancing he glides.”

Is Gough appalled by the idea of moving into musical theatre? “I’ve not got a bad voice, believe it or not,” he says. “With a few singing lessons, who knows? If you’d said to me a few years ago that I’d be spending my winter on a dancing tour, performing in front of 12,000 people, I’d have said you were sick.”

His preferred next step would be a move on to the small screen, possibly as Ally McCoist’s replacement as a captain on A Question of Sport. “When I was younger I wanted to present a Saturday-night quiz show, something like The Price is Right,” Gough says. “But Question of Sport would be great. I’m quite similar to Ally and my personality would come across the same in front of a camera.”

He will not, however, be looking to enhance his profile by appearing in any jungle-based reality shows. “That just isn’t me,” he says. “I’m always up for a challenge, but eating a kangaroo’s bits is no way to prove yourself.”

Rather than the celebrity, it is the adrenalin of performance that Gough relishes. The nervous feeling before he goes on stage is, he says, more intense than anything he felt during his cricket career. The only comparable feeling he has had recently was before his best man’s speech at Kevin Pietersen’s wedding last month.

Despite the nerves, on Monday night Gough and Kopylova were awarded a maximum of 60 points by the show’s three judges: a perfect ten from each judge for both of their dances that evening, the foxtrot and the paso doble. “Nobody’s got 60 before,” he says, proudly. “It might be hard work, but it’s the biggest buzz I’ve had in my life.”

Dazzling new roles

A few television shows that Darren Gough may be appearing in soon

A Question of Sport Ally McCoist’s departure has created a vacancy as captain that Gough would be keen to fill.

The Fast Show Suitable for Gough in his pomp. As he winds down his career, the show can be retitled “The Fast-Medium Show”.

All Creatures Great and Small Given Gough’s confusion between the rhinoceros and the ox [see main article], the vets would improve his animal awareness.

World’s Strongest Man Gough is the only dancer strong enough to attempt the Dirty Dancing lift.

Monarch of the Glen When he retires, Gough says that he could happily live “in the middle of nowhere” in Scotland or Ireland.