DANCING HIS WAY INTO THE NATION'S HEARTS JOHANNES RADEBE ON CURTSYING TO THE KING AND HOW HELLO! HELPED HIM FINALLY FIND HAPPINESS

Dressed to the nines in an elegant white-tie dinner suit as he was presented to the King at Buckingham Palace, Johannes Radebe felt himself sinking to the floor in the deepest theatrical curtsy he had ever performed.

- SALLY MORGAN

Recalling this extraordinary moment, the Strictly Come Dancing star booms with laughter at his over-exuberant spontaneous display in this exclusive interview with hello!.

“As I did it, I was thinking: ‘Johannes, what is wrong with you?’” he says, shaking his head. “It’s part of our culture as Africans to bow to an elder as a form of respect, but I don’t know what got into me to think this was a fitting way to greet the King.

“There was a gentle grin on his face as he picked me up with his eyes and said: ‘Hello, Johannes – welcome back to Buckingham Palace,’” he continues, recounting His Majesty’s kindly but bemused response.

MAJOR OCCASION 

He was surrounded by royalty – including the Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh – as well as ministers and diplomats at the King’s first state banquet as monarch, held in honour of South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, ten weeks after the death of Elizabeth II.

And Johannes, who is more accustomed to the Strictly dancefloor than the pa lace ba l l room, understandably felt overawed.

“I t was the most surrea l experience of my life,” he says as his compelling memoir Jojo: Finally Home, which charts his journey from humble beginnings in a small South African township to international fame, is published this week.