On one occasion, the family visited Gus on the set of Cash And Co, a hugely popular television series, and the children were dazzled. It must have left a deep impression because today, all four Mercurio children are involved in show business. Paul, however, recalls his main inspiration as being an Elvis Presley film, in which Presley was singing and dancing in an atmosphere of uninhibited creativity. The contrast to his own life instilled the urge to dance, and his mother enrolled him at a local suburban ballet school, where he was training in the basics of classical ballet, jazz ballet, theatrical dance and tap for the next three years.

At the age of 12, he dropped out to concentrate on surfing and more traditionally male pursuits, but the call to dance returned later while he was attending a high school that offered special courses in theatre arts. Paul knew that he had found his path in life, and knew that it was a path which could distress his deeply macho father. "Thank God I didn't turn out gay, because I feel it may have been a bit confronting for Dad!" he says wryly. "He was worried. He wrote me a letter saying: 'I know you're not gay, son.' But I come across that prejudice all the time. I may be married and have kids, but people still don't understand it. I mean, when Australians are confronted by an emotional male, they think he's either Italian or gay. I think it's really quite a shame, because you should allow yourself to feel life with all its faults. I mean, I know people who have never kissed their mother or given her a hug, and that's like, whooooah! So weird!" He shakes his head. "It always astonishes me…always."

Despite completing only four years of high school, Paul received a diploma of distinction and won a theatre award for his work. He left school to take up a full-time scholarship with the West Australian Ballet Company, choreographed his first ballet at the age of 17, was accepted into the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne and was selected by the gifted Graeme Murphy for the Sydney Dance Company (SDC). "I had family in Melbourne, loved ones," he explains, "but I didn't fit in real well at ballet school. They have a particular way of being, and I think my idea was broader. When I went to Sydney, I didn't have that support, that network of friends. Joining a professional company was hard, and Sydney had its own flavour, a bit...toffee-nosed. After my first year, I wanted to go home."

Mercurio is uncomfortable dwelling on the loneliness and hardship of his life, preferring not to "concentrate on the pain of developing anything". Nevertheless, he endeavours to clarify. "Perhaps the sadness of that period was just a lack of understanding where the future was going. I used to sit on the couch staring out the windows...some of it was loneliness, some of it was expansive. I spent a couple of New Year's eves and Christmases alone. I didn't have the money to go home, and so that was a bit sad. I used to go down to Reggio's café in Darlinghurst where I built up a new kind of family, a family made up of drug addicts and prostitutes and homeless kids and lonely and wandering souls like myself."

His time at Reggio's was immortalised in the celebrated Café, which he choreographed with Kim Walker for the SDC. It was also during this period that he met Andrea Toy, and artist three years his senior, and a respected dancer with the Australian Ballet. While his dancing was beginning to receive serious attention, his need for emotional security was growing. But given the heat of two creative temperaments, his relationship with Andrea was stormy. Paul left for Europe, concluding months of bickering, where he "bummed" around for eight months. He wrote long letters to Andrea-he was missing her badly but also wanted his freedom. When Andrea joined him, Paul was having an affair with a Dutch girl, a move which, in retrospect, cemented their commitment.

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