Louis Smith flexes his dancing muscles Life, he admits, has been strange without his rigorous schedule. Pre-Games he was training six days a week, but he hasn't been in the gym since. "I need to get back in there soon," he says, patting his stomach. His diet of fruit for breakfast, pasta for lunch and grilled chicken for dinner has been relaxed, too. I've been eating pizzas and all those bad things I love that I am never normally allowed. Now, life is about to get even stranger, as he embarks on an unfamiliar yet intense training regime. On Friday he will appear in the first of the live shows on BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing. His athletic prowess (and impressive flips in the preview show two weeks ago) have led the bookies to install him as the early favourite. Louis Smith on Strictly Come Dancing earlier this month "I don't feel like the favourite," he tells me on the phone a few weeks later, as he rushes to his second dance practice. I'm learning the cha-cha-cha at the moment and it's really hard work because it's so quick. I haven't quite nailed the routine; it's not really my dancing skill set - I don't think they're ever going to need the moonwalk or body-popping. He is pleased to have been paired with the professional dancer Flavia Cacace. We get on really well; she's very patient. Smith's movements have been fairly easy to track post-Olympics - he has become a prolific Twitter user since the end of the Games (he banned himself from Facebook and Twitter leading up to the event), reaching 100,000 followers the day we meet, "which is pretty cool considering I'm only a gymnast and we don't usually get this level of fame. It's weird; I never imagined I'd be in this position. I'm just trying to take full advantage of it. But he's too much of a gentleman to take full advantage of the offers that have been flowing in via Twitter since his win, both from women and from men. "It's mad what they've been saying they'd do to me," he says, laughing and looking shocked (I have seen some, and he is right to be afraid). "If I were a geezer, a player, I'd be having a field day," he says. But I'm not like that; I wouldn't have a one-night stand. I just want to find someone to settle down with."" Louis Smith models a Gucci jacket for the Telegraph Magazine fashion shoot. Photo: Adam Whitehead Gymnastics has been Louis Smith's whole life. He started aged four, following his older brother, Leon (now 27 and working in construction), to gym practice. "We did loads of different things, such as football, basketball, hockey, rugby and ice-skating," he says, "but gym was the one I excelled at." His mother, Elaine Petch, a single parent since Smith's father, Claude, left when he was three years old, was desperate to tire out her energetic son. Aged seven, he was diagnosed with ADHD. "I just couldn't concentrate," he says. If I read a book I would get a headache and be bored after about 10 minutes. He stayed at school, where he was called "Loopy Lou," until the start of AS-levels for the sake of his mother (he got one B and the rest Cs and Ds at GCSE), but he always saw his future in sport. Still, even in the gym he was naughty. As punishment for messing around, his coach, Paul Hall (who has been with Smith since he was seven), used to make him do 50 rotations on the pommel horse. "I was quite mischievous," he says, "so I ended up doing a lot more circles than anyone else." His success on the apparatus is thanks partly to this drilling, partly to natural talent and partly to anatomical advantage - atypically, he has a wingspan that is two inches greater than his height, of 5ft 11in. In training sessions earlier this year he was doing about 400 circles every training session, he says, "with 1,000 on Tuesdays and Thursdays." Louis Smith modelling for the Telegraph Magazine fashion shoot. Photo Adam Whitehead When he moved, aged seven, from his local gymnastics training centre in Peterborough to his current gym in Huntingdon, long seen as a talent nursery for the British team, his mother had a 40-minute drive there and back five or six times a week for 13 years, scraping together the money for petrol and gym fees. Apart from one trip last year to Tenerife, she hasn't had a foreign holiday since Smith was 11. She sacrificed a lot to help me do what I want to do. She's an angel," he says sweetly. When he was 14 Smith made the British team for the European Junior Championships in Slovenia, where he won gold against 17- and 18-year-olds. He realised then that if he wanted to be an Olympian, he would have to give up his other sports - and also "going out drinking with friends." He buckled down and five years later he won an unexpected bronze in Beijing, becoming the first Briton to win an individual Olympic medal in gymnastics since 1908. Good-looking and image-conscious, Smith was one of the stars of Team GB even before he competed. "The pressure was monstrous," he says. I don't think I'll ever be able to explain it. Evidence of that pressure came when the normally laidback Smith burst into tears as soon as he had landed after his routine in the qualifying round. Despite being a natural showman (he auditioned to be on The X Factor in 2009, prompting Cheryl Cole to squawk over his muscly arms), he says he does not miss the nerves he felt performing in front of 20,000 people in the Olympic individual final. The BBC's coverage attracted 2.8 million viewers (Strictly pulled in 9.8 million two weeks ago). Louis Smith was overcome by emotion after the Olympic qualifying round on July 28 "Footballers may be used to that, but it doesn't happen in gymnastics," Smith says. Everyone was clapping and cheering, including the Duchess of Cambridge. Then suddenly it went quiet. It was total pressure. I just felt sick. It was the best and the worst feeling of my life. I can't even imagine how I would have felt if I'd fallen off," he says trailing off, obviously imagining it. But you didn't, I say gently. "No," he agrees. It was flawless. He still can't believe that he didn't win gold. He and the Hungarian Krisztián Berki received the same score, but even though Smith's routine was technically more difficult, Berki won because he was awarded higher marks for execution. At the end of the day I did the best routine I've ever done in my life, and the amount of satisfaction I get thinking about that is crazy. I was also just relieved that I hadn't let my mum down," he says. Louis Smith in the men' s pommel horse final, August 5 Smith's achievement in Beijing resulted in a 14.3 per cent raise in funding for British gymnastics, and he hopes that the sport will see a similar increase now. Presently Britain's top gymnasts train at Huntingdon Gymnastics Club alongside mothers and toddlers to the strains of Old MacDonald ("it's seriously off-putting"), whereas other international athletes have a dedicated gym space. "I want to say to the Govern­ment, "Imagine what we could have achieved if we had our own facility,"" he says. The gym is trying to raise £600,000 to expand. Smith's personal fortune has been steadily on the increase, too. In 2007 he was on £300 a month funding from the National Lottery, which went up to £1,600 a month after Beijing. He won't reveal what he earns now, but with sponsors ranging from BMW to Adidas and Visa (Anglian Windows was probably an early deal), he is presumably not short of cash. He has bought his mother a new car, he drives a white BMW 3 Series, and his newly built three-bedroom house, 10 minutes away from the family home, is currently having its roof put on. He whips out his iPhone to show me photographs of two stained-glass windows that will take pride of place on either side of a fireplace - they depict the same giant angel wings that are tattooed on his back ("man, that was painful"). Louis Smith and his mum, Elaine Petch, who he calls his 'angel' He got the tattoo at a low point last summer, when he split up with his girlfriend, whom he knew from school. He says he lost a stone and a half in weight (down from his normal 11st 9lb), and the break-up nearly derailed his Olympic dream. "It almost killed me," he says. I was on a different planet for six months. The madness included up-loading a song that he had written for his ex on to YouTube (he writes music in his spare time), which has now had more than 21,000 views. "I only posted it so I could get a reaction from her," he says. Did you get one? "Yeah," he says, laughing. I got a screaming phone call. He says he'd like to take it down now but has forgotten his password. After the break-up he banned himself from getting into a relationship until after the Olympics, "because women are trouble." But now he has been on one date with a girl and says shyly, "It's going really well. Obviously it's early days, but I like her. He especially likes the fact that when they met, she didn't know who he was. That was refreshing. Louis Smith's back tattoo. Below the angel wings he added the words rest in peace, nan, missing you as a tribute to his maternal grandmother, Dilys Petch, who died in 2009. Dilys helped her daughter with the boys, particularly Louis. His ADHD meant he had trouble sleeping, and Dilys would lie in his bed with her eyes closed to help him to drop off (and let Elaine rest). He says he still has trouble sleeping: "No matter how tired I am, I just can't switch off, unless I've got a girl lying next to me," he says with a grin. Then I can go straight off. That's the best thing about having a girlfriend - a good night's sleep. With or without a good night's sleep, Smith wakes up each day aching "like an old man." His body is riddled with injuries. He fractured his last unbroken finger - the ring finger on his right hand - in March and currently has a fractured elbow (which he had when competing in London), a cyst on his hand and a torn cartilage in his knee. His palms are as rough as sandpaper, and his physiotherapist says he has the back of a 40-year-old. Louis Smith's damaged hands still bear witness to his punishing pre-Olympics training regime. His partying phase is drawing to a close, and he has his eyes on his future. As well as Strictly, which could keep him busy until mid-December, he is thinking about setting up a franchise of gyms aimed at encouraging children to get fit. Or perhaps a career in fashion. "It's just words at the moment, because I haven't had time to think about it, but it's a career path I'd love to look into," he says. He loves clothes and playing with his image, which he takes fairly seriously. He has developed a taste for designer clothes, with favourites including Vivienne Westwood and Hugo Boss. His favourite shoes are a pair of black Louboutins, but he mixes them with high-street brands "like All Saints and Next [another sponsor]. If it looks good, I don't mind where it comes from. He spends 30 minutes a day washing and straightening his hair (Petch is a hairdresser, but when I ask if she cuts it, he squeals, "Nooooo!"). His carefully trimmed facial hair requires daily attention. When he saw Stella McCartney, who designed the Team GB kit, at the GQ Men of the Year awards earlier this month, she told him to get in touch if he ever needed advice. "But my biggest plans for the future are to find Mrs Right, settle down and have kids," he says, grinning. All of which doesn't leave much time for training, should he want to stay on the team for Rio 2016. "In four years" time I'm going to be 27. That's old for this sport, and it's a long time for me to keep up there at the top. But we've got some fantastic boys coming up, and 2016 will be amazing..." he pauses. With or without me.