DON’T expect to see Josh Taylor appearing on Strictly Come Dancing anytime soon in a bid to help raise his profile.

“I can’t dance so I won’t be going on there!” laughs the 29-year-old. “I’d need a few lessons first.”

After just 16 professional fights, Taylor is already a unified world champion and will defend his WBA and IBF belts against the Thai Apinun Khongsong in London on Saturday.  Should he come through that test unscathed, he and his promoters at Top Rank will look to tie up a match-up with stablemate Jose Ramirez who holds the other two titles in the super-lightweight division.

At that point the prospect of Taylor becoming Scotland’s first undisputed world champion since Ken Buchanan almost 50 years ago becomes very real indeed.

 And yet, in an era when Scotland boasts few genuine global sporting superstars, Taylor remains a name not especially well-known to the masses. You don’t need to be a sports fan to have heard of Andy Murray or Chris Hoy, and yet Taylor and his predecessor Ricky Burns haven’t, for some reason, made the crossover yet to become household names.

 It isn’t something Taylor is particularly desperate to achieve but he does seem bemused that, having reached the peak of his profession, more people aren’t talking about it.

 “I’ve not had the recognition that I feel I really deserve, especially given what I’ve achieved so quickly in my career,” he says. “Boxing fans and sports fans know who I am but I think I deserve to be a wee bit more popular and more of a name in Scotland.

 “I don’t live for that and it’s not something that hugely bothers me but I just think if I were English or Irish I’d be seen as the best thing since sliced bread!

 “You look at Ricky Burns, a three-weight world champion. And outside of boxing and a few other sports fans, do people really know who he is? Probably not. And that’s a crying shame when you consider what we’ve both achieved for Scottish sport.

“But I’m grateful to the boxing fans who follow us all the way. I want to do it for them and for my country and the flag. I want to keep Scotland on the map.”

Being able to bring massive fights to his home city of Edinburgh would help with those aims but it remains logistically difficult to say the least. Taylor wanted to be able to still compete in Scotland before he would sign for the American-based Top Rank.

 But, having received those assurances, he finds himself with nowhere suitable in the capital capable of hosting a potential Ramirez sizzler this winter.

 “It would be brilliant to have that fight in Edinburgh but at that time of the year where is it going to be?” he asked rhetorically. “I’ve no problem with having fights in Glasgow as I love the people there and I’ve always had a warm reception. But ultimately you want to fight in your home city if you can as I’m an Edinburgh boy.

 “Edinburgh is the capital city and for it not to have an arena for major indoor events is an absolute joke. They’re doing far too many student accommodations all over the place, rather than building the city for the people.

“They’ve doing up Meadowbank but at the back end where the velodrome was they’re building more accommodation.

 “That bit of land there was huge and could have been a big indoor arena. I want to have these big nights in my hometown but it’s just not possible at the moment.”

The alternative is to wait for the better weather and put on an outdoors extravaganza. And while he has received encouragement from boyhood heroes Hibernian, there has not been the same level of interest from Edinburgh Castle.

“The Castle people have been pretty quiet about it,” he revealed. “We could have potentially one of the greatest Scottish sporting moments in history taking place and you would think Edinburgh Castle and Historic Scotland would be jumping at the chance to do something like that.

“So it’s quite frustrating. Hibs seem to be more up for it. We could get 20,000 at least in there and it would be amazing. But the feedback from the Castle has been pretty cold which is a shame.”

All of this will quickly become a moot point if he is dethroned by Khongsong behind closed doors on Saturday.

“A lot of people seem to be writing him off - I think me and my team are the only people who aren’t,” warned Taylor. “If I get it wrong, I won’t be having any of these big fights ahead. I have to make sure I do a professional job against Khongsong and then we can move on to the next challenge.”