Mark Foster: the pool player

Mark Foster, the Olympian swimmer and male model, is recalling with pleasure his briefish stint on the last series of Strictly Come Dancing - he gained notoriety more for wearing transparent tops showing his pecs than his moves. 'Everyone said: "You were really good," and I was like, "What TV did you watch? Did you see a still?"' he exclaims, grinning. 'I'm a head bopper at a bar, I don't take to the dancefloor unless I'm pissed, and I don't drink a lot, so that doesn't really happen. I was petrified but I loved it, absolutely loved it. If John Sergeant hadn't got all the sympathy vote I'd have been getting it. How do you take your tea?'

Is he bothered about promoting Marlboro when his career has been about fitness? 'Someone else said that to me - "What are you advertising cigarettes for?"' he exclaims in surprise. 'I said, "It's nothing to do with cigarettes, it's bloody clothes. Do you see a cigarette anywhere, do you? No. Marlboro Classics is owned by Valentino."'

These days the punishing training is a memory - he goes to a gym two or three times a week for 45 minutes. But when he goes to his condo on Miami Beach (most of the year he lives in the small market town of St Neots outside Cambridge with his two bulldogs) he plans to get his head down. 'Because of the modelling I do, it's a fickle world, and not being funny, but they want the body.'

His career in swimming began at the age of five at the urging of his father Robin, an adman, who had never learned to swim - 'he was petrified of water' - and wanted his children to be different. The family lived in Billericay. Mark's mother Sheila is a health visitor. His sisters, Katy, 42, and Claire, 40, now work in accounting. A swimming scholarship to Millfield led him to Canada at 16 to train, but at 18 he was back in Britain, on the dole, beginning a series of dead-end jobs to support his swimming - everything from being a courier to fitting double glazing and filing in an office. Mark bursts out laughing at the memory. 'Can you imagine? Me, filing.'

Carrying the flag at the Beijing Olympics was Mark's career high point. The low was being left out of Athens in 2004. In a now infamous decision, Bill Sweetenham, the then England coach, dropped him because he was seven hundredths of a second off the required competition time. 'It was horrendous,' he says now. 'Sitting at home and watching everyone else out there when I should have been with them.'

So what did it mean to him to be an Olympian? 'A lot. I mean, I took how good I was for granted; week in and week out I'd win medals and go to championships and it's what you do, you break the world record. Amazing, I'm dancing around for five minutes, then all of a sudden it's what's next?'

And what of Rebecca Adlington's success at Beijing? He smiles. 'I wish she'd won BBC Sports Personality of the Year, but that's me being biased. We got on really well. She used to run up to me and get autographs off me for friends and she was so excited about me. And in the Games, when she did what she did, I said to her, "Do you know what? You're amazing." And she said, "No, you're amazing." And I went, "No, no, no, what you've done is amazing; you don't understand what you've done." And she doesn't. I think it's slowly clicking into place, but I don't think you do really appreciate what you've done until you step away from it. What she achieved - you know, swimming and athletics are the two hardest Olympic sports there are.'

Rebecca is one of his good friends, along with the footballer David James, the athlete Colin Jackson and Martina Navratilova - She's wonderful, a lovely, lovely person.' Mark has never been married. 'I've travelled so much it has been very, very difficult,' he explains. 'I have had various relationships along the way, but at the moment no one.' Does he regret having to sacrifice that? 'No, I don't think I've missed out in any shape or form.'

Fashion assistant: Orsolya Szabo