Strictly star's first-ever musical is Chicago - Eastbourne dates

But behind it all there's been a long-standing ambition – an ambition which she has now fulfilled. An ambition which is living up to all the expectations that went with it.

At the age of 41, Janette is on the road with her first-ever musical. And the point is it's the musical that she always dreamt of being in, her favourite musical of all time, Chicago.

Dates include Eastbourne’s Congress Theatre (July 7-12) and Crawley’s Hawth Theatre (August 11-16).

“There are so many aspects to Chicago I love,” Janette says, “but I think first and foremost it is the music. There is not a single song in the musical that I don't really love listening to, and if you're going to be listening to them eight times a week for six months in a row, then that is really important! The fact that I love all the songs just feels big, big, big. But more significantly it is one of the first musicals where the two leads are women. And they're not cookie-cutter white-picket-fence ladies next door. They are two women that are nowhere near perfect but they are the leads, Roxie Hart (Janette) and Velma Kelly. There is a man in the story Billy Flynn, but it is not about Billy. It is about Roxie and it is about Velma and it is their story. The show was ahead of its time.”

The show famously opens: “Murder, greed, corruption, exploitation, adultery and treachery…all those things we hold near and dear to our hearts.” Set amidst the razzle-dazzle decadence of the 1920s, Chicago is the story of Roxie Hart, a housewife and nightclub dancer who murders her on-the-side lover after he threatens to walk out on her.

Desperate to avoid conviction, she dupes the public, the media and her rival cellmate Velma Kelly by hiring Chicago’s slickest criminal lawyer to transform her malicious crime into a barrage of sensational headlines…

“It's all those things that we still debate, that are still topics of conversation, the dangers of believing everything the press writes and the dangers of headlines and how those headlines can shape what we believe, how people maybe just read the headlines and nothing else and how those headlines might just be clickbait.”

Janette adds: “This is my first big musical. I keep thinking what am I going to do next. Chicago is my favourite musical of all time, and Roxie Hart is one of my favourite characters. Maybe I've peaked too soon!

“But I had always wanted to do a musical. I did musicals when I was a kid but dance was the thing that really took off for me but I always thought I would like to get back to it one day. And when I signed to my agents about eight years ago I said that one of the things that I really wanted to do was Chicago. They asked if I'd ever done a musical before and I said I had done some when I was a child. And so I started working on my voice. I hadn't actually played a character since I was 12 but I always knew I wanted to go back to this as part of my life and it has been fantastic. It really has been a life-long dream for me, and to be 41 and to be doing this for the first time ever is just fantastic. It feels a little bit crazy.”