Strictly Come Dancing newcomer Les Dennis has revealed he has a very specific goal in mind that he hopes to get out of this year’s series.
The former Family Fortunes host is one of 15 stars competing on the current season of Strictly, and will be making his dance floor debut with professional partner Nancy Xu in Saturday night’s live show.
Opening up in a new interview with The Times, the newspaper claimed an incident in which he walked in on his parents having sex as a teenager turned him into a “a bit of a prude”, which he hopes Strictly can help him overcome.
“Seeing what I saw and how it affected me is something I have to watch,” he explained. “Claire [his wife of 14 years] gets frustrated walking down the street because I’ll drop her hand and she’ll say, ‘Oh no you don’t.’
“Or, if she asks me to dance, I won’t. I’ll just say, ‘I’m doing a bit of dad dancing.’”
Les continued: “I am genuinely hoping that learning intimacy with a stranger will mean I will gain the confidence to dance with my wife. [Nancy] says I’ve really got to embrace that goal.
“She says I’ve got to stop saying ‘when I’m voted off in week two’ because she reckons I’ll manifest that and it will happen. So what I’m manifesting instead is ‘when we get to Blackpool’ and ‘when we win’.”
He added: “I really don’t want people to say, ‘Oh Les was funny this week, let’s keep him in.’ I want them to vote for me because I’m getting better at dancing. Good dancing is sexy and who doesn’t want to be good at that?”
Les and his wife Claire Nicholson have been married since 2009, and share two children, 15-year-old Ellie and 12-year-old Tom.
He also has a 43-year-old son, Philip, from his first marriage to Lynne Webster. After they divorced in 1990, Les was married to TV personality Amanda Holden between 1995 and 2003.
This year’s pre-recorded Strictly launch show aired on Saturday night, in which viewers found out all of the 2023 pairings for the first time.
Check out the full list here.