Sir Bruce Forsyth has revealed the reason he wanted to quit Strictly Come Dancing was because he wasn't getting enough fun out of it.

The veteran presenter announced his retirement from the BBC celebrity dancing contest earlier this year, but he has told the Daily Mirror that feeling exhausted by the amount of work wasn't his only reason for leaving.

He said: "With Strictly I did have a problem with it personally: I couldn't get enough fun out of doing it. When I first started I hoped I would be able to get in amongst it all. Play Your Cards Right and the Generation Game, they were fun shows.

"With Strictly I was mostly a presenter - good or bad - but there wasn't an avenue in it where I could have fun."

Brucie added of the live shows: "People don't realise, they criticise and it's all very well, but live television is very hard.

"Particularly the way that show is set up. It's a long show. The first one is one hour and 40 minutes long and I probably make about 30 or 40 entrances, so it is a stressful job.

"I had three shows off last year, agreed with the BBC, and that was to make it a little bit easier for me as regards to stress. During the last shows I was thinking: 'Should I be doing this any more?' A little voice in my head said: 'Do you need to do this any more?'."

He explained: "Then I got away and talked with my wife about it. And I came back straight away, contacted the BBC and said 'I'm not thinking about leaving - I'm definitely leaving'.

"They were disappointed. But there's always a time to go and I'm glad I did. It was a decision I didn't take lightly but now I've taken it, it's confirmed my feeling was right."

Bruce admitted: "I don't have the feeling I usually get every time this year, knowing I've got to slog away until Christmas and then go away dog tired. I'll feel very strange and I'll miss it like mad, but when you've been with something for 10 years that will happen.

"But I'll miss it in a relaxed way, rather than thinking: 'Oh I want to be up there!', I don't particularly want to be."

Co-presenter Tess Daly will now be joined by Claudia Winkleman, but Brucie said he wouldn't be disappearing completely: " I'm not cutting myself off completely from the show. I'll be there in the background."

He said of keeping working at 86: "People are just living longer these days and all sorts of people in all sorts of fields of life are retiring far later now. I mean, when I am on a studio floor I feel 35, not 86."

But one thing he won't be doing is popping up on Celebrity Big Brother: "I wouldn't be seen dead on a show like that. What I do now is I cut down on a lot of things that are asked of me. I will do some interviews for people, I will do that for friends. But when it comes to stuff you don't really want to do, why do it if you don't have to?"