Strictly dropout Robert Webb has branded the show 'brutal' and 'weird'

STRICTLY Come Dancing dropout Robert Webb has kicked out at the show as brutal and weird.

The comedy favourite said he got fed up with having cameras around all the time and feared being cancelled for saying something wrong.

And he said he struggled to learn the intense routines.

The Peep Show actor, 49, who was partnered with Dianne Buswell, quit the BBC One show last week because of a health scare.

But he admitted the contest was not what he had been expecting. He said: “You turn up and there is this reality to it.

“There is always a camera and there is a camera in the rehearsal room. And it is unnatural as an actor as you want to be in this headspace where you are all trusting each other and you can do it wrong and be bad in front of your fellow actors and the director and it does not matter without getting cancelled.

“But I trust the people as they are only there to make you look good, but it is a bit weird having this thing of cameras all the time.

“It is not like it is an unpleasant environment, but they are long days and it is a long time to be nice.”

'It is an absolutely weird show'

Robert also said that trying to learn the dance moves left him on the brink of tears.

He said: “Last week I could not get it at all and I was almost weeping as it is so intense. It’s like, ‘I have got to do this on Saturday. I am never going to do this bit’. Dianne simplified it for me.

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"She says, ‘It works better. It fits the music better.’ It’s all lies as she has just made it easier for me because I could not do the bit I found hard.

“A lot of the time I am not wired up right as my brain refuses to put this leg over this leg. If we had longer to rehearse it would happen, but we get four days and one performance.

“Like in the theatre you have press night and we are always doing the first show and it will be the worst show.

“The actors know this will be the worst performance except at the end of that performance [Strictly] you might get fired. It is brutal. It is an absolutely weird show.”

Last week I could not get it at all and I was almost weeping as it is so intense.

Robert was speaking at the Henley Literary Festival earlier this month to promote his memoir How Not to Be a Boy.

A week after his comments he quit Strictly following advice from doctors.

He had open heart surgery two years ago and said “it became clear that I had bitten off way more than I could chew for this stage in my recovery”.

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