´óÏó´«Ã½

As the boys will be first to take to the floor on September 20th we thought we'd take a sneaky peek through some of the training room doors to see how they're getting on.

With the first live show of the series only nine days away, everyone is trying to get to grips with the steps for their first routines. As many of the boys haven't danced before we wondered how they were faring.

Tom seems to have things well under control, and by his own admission seems to be enjoying it. "This is the most enjoyable job I've done. It's brilliant, massively enjoyable." Tom's been very relaxed so far and has even found time to crack jokes and lark around with his fiancé Clare. They are planning their wedding while Tom dances in the competition so he'll certainly have a lot on his mind in the coming weeks.

Andrew is finding it hard to learn his steps, and Ola has been working hard to stop him from looking at his feet while he dances. To stop him Ola has devised her own incentive scheme, "Every time you put your head down you'll have to pay me £10!" By the end of the session Andrew has given Ola his credit card to pay off the debt, but they were starting to make real progress.

Mark and Hayley are also getting on well with their routine but have been working hard on the acting part of the role, in particular Marks smile. "In my sport I've got my face in the water so it doesn't matter what your face looks like." Mark jokes that there aren't many similarities between Strictly and swimming, "I'm not going to be in my hotel room the night before shaving my legs".

John and Kristina are working on their waltz and she's been pleased with his progress so far. John reveals that he hasn't felt nervous so far but he's not sure what will happen when the big day arrives. "The difference with my job in news is that you don't know what's coming so you don't know when to be nervous. " I'm not used to being nervous in advance."

You can see more of how the gents are getting on in our launch programme on Saturday at 6.30pm and we'll be catching up with some of our other couples later in the week as we count down to the start of the live shows.