Some 500 miles from Strictly’s glittering ballroom, overlooking the Sound of Mull, there is a pile of logs stacked outside Hamza Yassin’s remote Scottish village home, waiting to be chopped.
It’s a task the rugby playing, caber-tossing strongman will manage with little more than a flex of his artful little finger, most probably.
Then the once relatively unknown wildlife-cameraman-turned- Strictly’s -surprise-ballroom-whizz will no doubt turn his attention to chopping his friends’ and neighbours’ logs, too.
He usually offers to help, they explain gratefully, when he’s not off filming with a frost-encrusted face in Arctic wildernesses.
This is the man who has fashioned one such log into a barbell for a little light exercise, and excels in the local Highland Games with the caber, hammer and shot put, after all.
But if we’re learning one thing about Hamza, who moved to this remote location 11 years ago, as this year’s Strictly dances on, it’s to expect the unexpected.
He may be built like a rugby union front-row forward, brave polar bears and fling his petite dance partner Jowita Przystal into the air like a yo-yo, but that’s not the end of the Countryfile and CBeebies presenter’s hidden talents.
“He is also a bit of a Gok Wan, ” explains his neighbour and friend Gayle Richardson, giggling hard.
“Any time I’m going on a night out or buying clothes I will often take a selfie and send it to him.
"If I can’t decide between two or three outfits he will say, ‘Wear this, not those shoes’. And you know what, he’s always spot on.
“I’ll come and do a twirl for him and go, ‘What do you think?’ He has a natural eye for it.”
But Gayle, 47, who has known Hamza since he first moved to the village on the peninsula of Ardnamurchan in Lochaber, and lives right next door, is very familiar with his strongman side, too.
Long before Jowita experienced the gasp-inducing “dead lift” during the pair’s sensational salsa, Gayle was told to “plank” and was thrown into the blue sky outside their homes.
It was just a regular Sunday five years ago. Hamza thought it would be fun to try.
“It’s a bit of a signature move,” Gayle reveals. “I was joking with him he wouldn’t be able to lift me so he was like, ‘Of course I can’.
“So we gave it a go. He said, ‘OK, you have to keep really still and don’t laugh’.
“So he lifted me up and I started giggling and just crumbled, but he just caught me. I was heading for the ground, he didn’t let me fall!”
Gayle and some of the other villagers travelled to watch Hamza in the live show when he performed said salsa.
“As soon as he lifted Jowita up we all nodded to each other because we knew what was coming next,” laughs Gayle.
She adds: “He’s a fascinating guy. There are so many strings to his bow. He’s super strong but super sweet.”
Jowita will definitely agree, after mics picked up the overwhelmed cameraman telling her “You’re amazing, you’re amazing” after his 38 point-scoring American Smooth last weekend.
Hamza, 32, was born in Sudan and grew up in Khartoum, but moved to the UK when he was eight along with his siblings and doctor parents, after the family was invited here by the Royal College of Medicine.
They lived first in Newcastle, then Northampton, and Hamza studied zoology at Bangor University, then gained a masters in biological photography at Nottingham.
He made the surprising decision to move to such an isolated location after a university friend took him for a holiday.
The boy who grew up overlooking crocodiles in the River Nile from his rooftop just fell in love with the wildlife.
For nine months, he lived in his car, spending days photographing the local eagles, otters, stags and pine martens. He’s said it’s where he “cut his teeth” as a wildlife cameraman and now considers himself “a Scotsman”.
His arrival might have been unorthodox, but the village quickly opened its arms to the cheerful, smiling chap who wanted to help wherever he could.
Gayle even became his first Jowita, giving him lessons in Scottish ceilidh dancing.
“I can remember being at the Mull Music Festival maybe six years ago and teaching him – me teaching him, which seems ridiculous now,” she smiles. “He’d never done it but we can all see he has a natural rhythm and is super light on his feet.”
Head judge Shirley Ballas last week labelled Hamza the “one to beat” but few expected the sheer fluidity of his movement. Except, perhaps, the gang he calls his “Scottish family”.
While Gayle sees him as “the little brother I never had”, Chris and Amanda Gane are his “Scottish parents”, according to Hamza, and Chris too, recalls nights of dancing.
“He’s very good, his hair flies everywhere,” he says, explaining how Hamza will go dance with his children to the more “energetic” routines.
While Hamza helps Chris and his wife with re-tiling the roof, digging and naturally, that log chopping, they support him as they would a son.
Amanda “looks after him like a mother would”, especially with Hamza’s dyslexia.
“He has never made any secret of the fact he is dyslexic,” Chris explains. “He wants to show people it just means you think differently and maybe need to take a different path in order to be successful.”
While Chris has become a surrogate Scottish father.
“He’s very close to his mum and dad but they don’t live locally so if he asks, ‘Can you help me put up some guttering?’, the sort of thing a dad would do with his son,” he says. “I have gone up to help erect his bird hides and taken his camera equipment too.”
The village is right behind Hamza, getting together each week in their community hall to watch Strictly.
His pals want nothing more than to have him back and maybe even settle here with a family of his own one day.
“He will make someone the most amazing husband,” says Gayle.
For now though, it is her border collies Misty and Lucy who pine for him. “They recognise his voice on TV so when they hear it it’s really cute, they get excited thinking he’s about to walk through the door,” she admits.
Possibly when he does, it will be with a rather more glittery ball than they’re used to.
