With his chiselled jaw, almond-shaped, come-to-bed eyes and rippling physique, as well as a set of pecs honed and toned to perfection, it's no wonder that Emanuel Tabone is drawing millions of women fans to the BBC1 Saturday night show DanceX.

But the 23-year-old super stud from Malta wasn’t always so desirable. In fact, as exclusive pictures on yesterday’s Daily Mirror show, just a few years ago he was a skinny violin-scraping bookworm, bullied for wearing glasses.

And, as Emanuel confessed to the paper, he used to be a bit of a nerd. “I was a geek and because I wore specs I could never be in the cool gang,” he says.

“All I wanted was to fit in and be accepted by everyone, but I never was. There was a lot of name-calling, like Four Eyes. I’d get pushed and shoved around a lot.

“They’d do everything they could to make me feel like an outsider. It hurt me so much and my schooldays weren’t happy. I never wanted to go to school. I hated it.”

Emanuel is the star of Team Arlene in the talent competition in which two groups of performers led by dance gurus Arlene Phillips and Bruno Tonioli battle it out to win a place in a new song and dance troupe.

The team least popular with the public loses a member each week until the live final on 25 August. And there’s no denying that plenty of the population are tuning in just to enjoy Emanuel’s smouldering looks and hunky bod.

After going to boarding school in England from the age of 13 he returned to Malta following his A levels and started work at his father’s wholesale business. Dad, Emanuel Snr, was keen for his only son to go to university and study law or medicine. He was not going to let his boy pursue a career in dance. The dispute developed into a family feud and threatened their relationship.

But Emanuel was determined that he wanted to perform and entered a competition which won him a scholarship at the Bodywork dance school in Cambridge.

It wasn’t until his dad saw him take to the stage for the first time – where he belted out Close Every Door from Joseph – that he realised what a talented son he had. “For the first time he told me he was proud of me,” Emanuel reveals. “My mum told me afterwards that the look on his face as I’d been performing was so happy.”

Now the family are behind him 100 per cent and Emanuel Snr and Emanuel’s mum Doris flew in to Heathrow to be in the studio audience cheering on their boy in yesterday’s show.