Craig and Bruno reveal highlights from their ITV road trip as they talk "harsh" judging styles on Strictly Come Dancing

But it's not just the beautiful scenery the Strictly Come Dancing judges discovered along the way, as they also found out they have a lot more in common, having both moved to the UK - Bruno from Italy and Craig from Australia – with no family, friends or "money."

Here, former Labour MP Ed Balls, who they met back on the BBC dance show in 2016, interviews them for Radio Times.

From their "harsh" judging styles on Strictly to their relationships with their dads and how this impacted on them, Bruno and Craig get very candid.

Ed Balls: Seeing you in your new series, away from the dance floor, it might surprise people to discover you’re petrol heads. But you both know about cars, don’t you?

Bruno Tonioli: Yeah. My dad used to repair bodywork. He worked for a bus company during the week and did extra hours in a local garage. My mum sewed upholstery and, since I was a kid, I used to see Ferraris, Maseratis, Mercedes, Jaguars… In fact, I took the Tube until I could buy a Porsche. I am that particular about cars.

Craig Revel Horwood: I have a Triumph Stag from 1973 and I absolutely love it. I didn’t have a driving licence when I bought it, but while it was being restored, I passed my test. That was 10 years ago, and it was brilliant to have that as my first car. I then got into cars and driving, totally adored it and have been interested ever since.

Ed: Whose idea was it to go on a TV road trip?

Bruno: It came out of an idea I was developing. My original pitch for the programme was to do the history of British brands – Aston Martin, Bentley, Jaguar, Rolls-Royce – and the germ of the idea was to go around the country to where they were made. From that it developed into taking drives on breathtaking British roads that I didn’t even know existed. We’ve both been in this country for 30 years, and been everywhere, but never off the beaten track.

Ed: What did you learn about the UK that you didn’t know before?

Bruno: The variety of scenery and unspoilt beauty that is still so accessible, and near every major city in the country.

Craig: I learnt what a dale was. I thought the Yorkshire Dales was named after someone called Dale. I was delighted to discover that there are 170 of them.

Ed: Did you enjoy being on the road together and filming the series?

Bruno: Oh my God, we did. We laughed so much, sometimes we nearly cried. Craig is much more laid-back than I am. I am the most snappy.

Craig: He can be diva-ish when he’s driving.

Bruno: It’s not diva-ish.

Craig: I’m just saying that I’m always wrong and he’s always right. Plus, we know each other really well. We’re friends anyway, outside Strictly and work. We like going to the theatre and out for meals together.

Bruno And we don’t have to perform when we’re with each other. I can be myself, and he can be himself.

Ed: Who did the driving?

Craig: We split it. But it depended on where we were going, and whether we wanted to see Bruno reverse or not.

Bruno: Basically, I got the most difficult roads you can possibly think of. Some of the roads, I tell you, they were like a winding, single lane – no guard rail, and drops of 2,000 feet.

Ed: Who was the best driver?

In unison: I was!

Craig: I was the safest, but he kept calling me Hyacinth Bucket.

Bruno: He’s Hyacinth Bucket. [Does impression] “Richard! Mind the road! Mind the cyclist!”

Ed:Was Craig a back-seat driver?

Bruno: He was the mother-in-law in the back of the car – but even worse because he was sitting next to me. I wanted to kill him.

Craig: Only because you crashed the car.

Bruno: I didn’t crash the car! He made such a drama. He was screaming.

Craig: When he was reversing, I said, “Bruno, be careful, there’s bollards and big rocks behind us.” He said, “I’ve been driving for over 34 years…” CRASH. And that’s when he threatened to kill me.

Bruno: Because I’m trying to reverse on a cliff in Cornwall and he’s like, “Mind the…” I’m like, “Shut up!” BANG. [laughs] But it wasn’t a crash. We laughed ourselves silly.

Craig: We did. It was good to get to know Bruno a bit better. Your defences come down and you forget anyone’s filming. We found out we had really similar backgrounds – coming to London with nothing: no family, no friends…

Bruno: No money. Nothing.

Ed: What else did you learn about each other?

Bruno: He’s the most easy-going person. Whatever impression people have of him, they’re completely wrong. He’s generous to a fault.

Craig: I’ll never get work after this, darling! I learnt that he has an even shorter fuse than I remember [laughs].

Bruno: The thing is, I’m direct. In everyday life, I’m not the kind of person that will bulls**t you and tell you what you want to hear.

Ed: If there had been a flat tyre, who would have changed it?

Craig: I could do it.

Bruno: On those kind of things, Craig is very, very… he’s Australian! He can do anything.

Craig: He’d make me do it. He’d say, “Craig, that needs fixing.” That’s the relationship we have. I’m the lackey [laughs].

Ed: Being a petrol head is traditionally seen as being quite a macho pastime, isn’t it?

Craig: It’s not what people would think of me, definitely. Doing ballet, you know, doesn’t exactly go with “petrol head”, does it? And it’s what people don’t know about us. I think people will get to know us a lot better in this show.

Bruno: It’s not just us. People are not one-dimensional. We all have different aspects of ourselves.

Craig: Of course. Ed, as a politician you were totally different to how you are in real life. And you had to be, because it’s a job, isn’t it?

Ed: People see the caricature, don’t they? They build it out, and they assume that that’s how you always are.

Bruno: And it’s not true. It couldn’t be more different. People think that I’m this light-head, but I’m not at all. I know my s**t [laughs]. I spend most of my time reading books.

Craig: He’s a history buff.

Bruno: I was reading a book on the Vikings on my day off. I’m not just about dancing or show business. That is my profession, but you cannot limit yourself. It’s like languages. If you don’t learn languages, you won’t learn about different cultures. If you don’t learn about different cultures, you don’t know about the world. And if you don’t know about the world, what are you doing here?

Ed: You’ve both spoken and written about having quite challenging relationships with your dads when you were growing up and in the 1960s and 70s. Society feels very different now, so do you think that, if you were growing up today, it would be easier for both of you?

Craig: I think so, definitely. In my home town of Ballarat, ballet was not accepted, but it’s now a very arty-farty place. There’s a theatre school. Dance is celebrated. Back then, it never was. I lived around kids who were making their own cars to drive off-road.

Ed: Then, there was quite a narrow view of what it is to be a man.

Craig: Completely. You can be a drag queen like myself, and still like fiddling with cars and saying, “I like a V8 engine.”

Bruno: Things have changed enormously, but that’s not to say there isn’t a lot still to be achieved.

Craig: It was an issue, though, for both of us. If I had been into cars back then rather than ballet, my dad would probably have embraced me and enjoyed that whole side of it.

Ed: What would he think now, if he could see this programme?

Craig: I think he would be really proud. Later on in life, after 20 years in the Navy, he started falling in love with my drag act.

Bruno: The thing is, Ed, to be honest, I had issues with it for many, many years. My parents went through the war. It’s a concept for them that was completely alien. It’s nothing to do with being a bigot. It’s just incomprehensible. I have come to terms with it, because you have to understand their point of view as well. And I can see it now. As a teenager, I was screaming and going crazy. But it was something beyond their experience. I knew they loved me. But they didn’t know what this boy was about. But once I became successful as a choreographer, and they came to London, and I was living with somebody, and they stayed with me… You see something in their eyes. The “aha” moment.

Ed: They were proud, in the end?

Bruno: Of course they were, because I proved that I could do something with myself.

Ed: Did your dad like cars as well, Craig?

Craig: No, he was really cheap when it came to cars. He always bought them second-hand. There were five kids in the family and he’d sling us all in the back. No seatbelts. He’d drive this old Holden up to Sydney and it always overheated. There was never any water to put in the radiator, either. We’d be in the blazing hot sunshine, trying to find a tree to sit under until the whole thing had calmed down. It was awful!

Ed: I’ve got to ask you about Strictly. When I say to people, “Actually, Craig is really supportive and nice off-stage”, people are quite shocked. I’m not sure if they want to believe it. They quite like you being tough…

Craig: I think they do. And I think people would be bitterly disappointed if I wasn’t honest on the panel.

Ed: From personal experience, sometimes the truth was a bit harsh…

Craig: People don’t like to be told the truth, as you’ve learnt in politics. As soon as you say something honest, they’re going to make you backtrack. Bruno and I certainly didn’t do that in the car, and that’s why we get on. I’m opinionated. And he’s as opinionated as I am.

Ed: Even before Strictly, were you both mates?

Bruno: No, we never met. We both worked for Arlene [Phillips, the choreographer and former Strictly judge] as dancers. But we never crossed paths, because Craig was theatre; I was film, television, music.

Ed: How did you find doing Strictly from America, Bruno?

Bruno: I have to say, Ed, I quite enjoyed it. I never watch anything back, and last year I actually saw the show as you would at home.

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Ed: And Craig, I think you were slightly more generous last year…

Bruno: I thought he was like Mother Teresa.

Craig: I wanted to put a positive spin on it.

Ed: Do you think the two of you at times have been a bit too harsh on people like me?

Craig: We told you the truth. You should never have signed up and taken the money [laughs].

Bruno: You knew what you were getting yourself into! And you were very, very good. You didn’t fool me for a second. You squeezed that lemon for every drop, and I loved it.

Ed: You said about my Gangnam Style performance that it was “the best worst dance”. I’ve never known quite how to take that.

Bruno: It’s a great compliment!

Ed: Andrew Lloyd Webber has said that theatre has been an afterthought and undervalued during the pandemic – do you agree with him?

Bruno: I do. They have Wembley full. They’re going to have Wimbledon full. Why can’t you have Drury Lane full? What’s the point of a vaccine if you can’t go to the theatre or travel? All we need to do is, everybody applies the same rules, and you stick to it. If you don’t want to be vaccinated – fine. But you can’t go to the theatre, and you can’t fly. Don’t stop anyone else.

Ed: Have you found positives in the past year?

Craig: For me, it was understanding myself, actually, because I’ve had so much time by myself at home. And actually valuing where I am in life, and being free to think about that, rather than thinking about work, work, work, work. It was nice to take a step back and breathe.

Bruno: It’s the same thing. For 15 years, I’ve been on the treadmill. It’s always: “What’s the next thing? What’s the next job?” You just pull the plug. You read books. I actually loved it.

Ed: Craig, you and your partner Jonathan Myring are planning your wedding?

Craig: Yeah. It would have happened this year, but the pandemic has put it back to 2023. God knows what I’m going to look like then!

Craig and Bruno's Great British Road Trips starts on ITV on Wednesday, 14th July at 9pm. While you’re waiting, check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.