An Audience with Ann Widdecombe is coming to Kent as the latest part of a highly-acclaimed nationwide tour. Helen Geraghty stepped lively to catch up with the fast-moving former Maidstone and the Weald MP.

As fans of Strictly Come Dancing will know, Ann Widdecombe usually has a good answer to most questions.

But she admits that one query in the question-and-answer section of her tour An Audience with Ann Widdecombe left her stumped.

She recalls: “One lady took me quite by surprise when she asked: 'Do you know why anyone would want to have an affair with John Prescott?’ I really couldn’t answer that one and, do you know, I still can’t!

“I suppose the joy about the audience asking questions is that you never know what you are going to get. Some audiences are very interested in the political side and some people have come along because they saw me on Strictly Come Dancing and liked it.”

Questions and anecdotes will come thick and fast when former MP Ann comes to the EM Forster Theatre in Tonbridge on Friday, September 16. The structure of the show sees her in conversation with political commentator and broadcaster Iain Dale.

Ann has found that the questions often set the tone for the evening and she reckons she is happy to talk about just about anything.

“I mainly talk about parliament, writing and television as I assume it is one of those three things that have brought people there,” she added.

“I have talked quite a lot about my time growing up in Singapore, where we moved around a lot. I talk about Strictly as it still seems to be so vivid in people’s minds.

“What people sometimes don’t realise is that the producers of Strictly asked me to take part every year from 2004 onwards but I only took it on in the year that I retired (2010). What stopped me was the dignity issue. Constituents don’t expect to see their MPs being dragged across the floor in a pasodoble. And with all the demands of training it would actually have been physically impossible.

“Years before, when I appeared on Celebrity Fit Club in 2002, I knew I would definitely not have done it if I hadn’t left the Front Bench. It was groundbreaking at the time, MPs hadn’t done that sort of thing and I would not have done it and taken those risks if I hadn’t left the Front Bench.”

Ann, a former Shadow Home Secretary, now lives on Dartmoor, where she writes books. Soon she will be starting rehearsals for her first-ever panto performance, in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at Dartford’s Orchard Theatre this Christmas.

The 63-year-old says she is loving her time away from the political spotlight – but still has plenty of new things to try. The Tonbridge booking of An Audience with Ann Widdecombe will be its first airing in the county and she has an autobiography out next year.

She says: “ I like to think that yes, I have retired from the House of Commons, but I have NOT retired to my rocking chair.”

An Audience with Ann Widdecombe is on Friday, September 16, at 7.30pm at the EM Forster Theatre, Tonbridge School.