My interview with Steven McRae, the Royal Ballet's young Aussie star, is in today's Independent. Ballet critic par excellence Clement Crisp has apparently said he's the best Bluebird he'd ever seen and my friends at The Ballet Bag told me he's 'practically perfect', I can't wait to see his debut as the Prince in The Sleeping Beauty tonight.

Back in the days when I wanted to be a ballewina when I gwew up my parents were desperately snobby about the idea. The stereotypes flew around the Hampstead hills: dancers were brainless, anorexic and all the rest of it...Wish they could have met this zippily bright guy, who's not only learning seven roles at any one time but is also doing an OU business degree and told me, in an interview out-take, that he loved Latin at school and would have wanted to be a lawyer or architect if he wasn't dancing.

Here he is some years ago winning the Prix de Lausanne with a James Bond tap solo...