David Seymour has revealed that his Dancing With the Stars experience got off to even rockier start than everyone suspected.

Speaking on Three' The AM Show on Tuesday morning, after he was eliminated from the network's reality show on Monday night, the 35-year-old Act leader said an equipment failure left him in a panic before his inaugural dance with partner Amelia McGregor to The Knack's My Sharona.

"I was supposed to start up a motorbike but, because somebody had done so many rehearsals, the lights had been left on and the thing wouldn't start."

Admitting he knew nothing about motorbikes, Seymour said he wrestled with it and lost focus on his impending dance routine.

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However, by the end of his run, he was "pretty chill" about anything the competition threw his way, a measure of his progress and the efforts of "the hardest working woman in New Zealand" McGregor. Counting out loud was critical, "otherwise you got out of time", he said, although maybe, he admitted, that unlike him, "you should use your inside voice".

Earlier in the morning, Seymour told More FM's Breakfast Club that he was stoked to have managed to get  as far as he did ("I was supposed to go home in week one..according to all the clever people"), joking that workers at his chosen charity Kidsline were, "going to be counselling kinds on gold-plated telephones after last night's effort from voters" to try and keep him in the competition.

Acutely aware that his "dancing flaws were pretty obvious to the entire nation", Seymour hoped that, "if we got anything out there it's that everyone has got their flaws, however if you get out there and back yourself, it's amazing how many Kiwis will get behind you".

"For everyone we know who said 'you can't dance',  which was pretty obviously to everyone, there seemed to be 10 people texting to keep us in."

When asked about his unexpectedly impressive performance dancing a Viennese Waltz on last week's show, Seymour said he had definitely felt more comfortable doing ballroom rather than latin moves. "I haven't been good at [anything] Latin since third form. It feels better when you have to hold a firm frame and it's not as fast. It was also a good song [Sia's Snowman] and they finally dressed us up properly...I think what you wear does affect how you feel."

David Seymour is proud of how far he and dance partner Amelia McGregor progressed in Dancing With The Stars

Addressing the issue of his infamous twerking a fortnight ago, Seymour said he was encouraged to do so by people on the show's set.

"I've never thought about myself as being an attractive man, but some of the women on set thought I had attractive buttocks and said, 'what you should do is twerk'. Who know that after screwing up every dance in the history of dance that I wouldn't be bad at twerking. You've got to shake what you've got and it probably got us through another round."

Asked by The AM Show hosts to comment on working with Seymour, McGregor said she was a "bit worried" at the beginning. "But he was hard working, very focused, always trying and always wanting to do the right thing. We did struggle with who was right and who was wrong sometimes and I did have to remind him a few times who was the dancer. But even though we joked around a lot, I could have asked for a better person to work with."

David Seymour says he definitely felt more at home doing the ballroom dances than Latin ones.

Now keen to spend more time now on getting his End of Life Choice Bill through Parliament and "getting Act ship-shape" for the 2020 election, Seymour told More FM that competing on Dancing With the Stars had certainly increased his profile. "I hope it has helped people looking for someone to vote for in the next election."

However, the increased media coverage had also meant his sense of humour had sometimes been misinterpreted, even by "serious journalists".

"Once upon a time, I could have just had a joke with a few journalists. But last week, when I was asked about whether Matariki should be a public holiday and I said no and, 'let's cancel Christmas', it suddenly became a story."

 - Stuff