Gordeno excelled especially in live cabaret, backed by his loyal and enthusiastic dancers. As well as successes on the QE2, he appeared for many seasons throughout the 1970s and early 1980s at the Talk of the Town in London, and at the Sporting Club, Monaco, for three seasons at the Riviera in Las Vegas, in three hugely popular tours of the Soviet Union and a string of live concerts in Sydney.

A succession of television appearances, intended to promote his records, created yet more demand for his ineffably smooth dancing and choreography. He appeared in Max Bygraves’ show Do Re Mi (1961), took a role in the murder mystery film Secrets of a Windmill Girl (1965), and was in ABC-TV’s The Blackpool Show, compered by Tony Hancock (1966), and the West End production of the musical Man of La Mancha (1968).

Gordeno began to suffer doubts about his career at about this time and was then involved in a serious car crash. He drew heavily on the support of his wife, Angela Wallace, and their children in overcoming the psychological damage, caused in particular by his facial injuries .

He bounced back with a solo spot on the The David Frost Show in December 1968, which led to a 13-week engagement on LWT’s The Saturday Crowd (1969). That year he won a Golden Rose award in Montreux for the song Everybody Knows. An appearance on Juke Box Jury led to him being cast as Carlin in UFO, the 1970 television show created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson in the wake of the success of their Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet marionette series. Gordeno plunged into the part, often performing his own action stunts, but left after only seven episodes of the 26-part series when his agent warned him of the dangers of typecasting.

His later work included a BBC TV special, The Peter Gordeno Show, which had some success as an export, and performances with Mike and Bernie Winters and the Three Degrees in a BBC1 Seaside Special at Blackpool in 1975, and with Nana Mouskouri and Les Dawson in 1976 at Caesar’s Palace, Luton. He also compered the UK and world disco dancing competitions live for ITV, and undertook behind-the-scenes choreographing and coaching of artistes including Tom Jones, Twiggy and Engelbert Humperdinck. However, his choreography and acting role as the Shaman in Carry on Columbus (1992) was less successful, as was his first and only appointment as director, for the stage production The Baskerville Beast (2005).