Former ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ star Brendan Cole has revealed he had a lucky escape when his tour bus caught fire during his UK tour.
The professional dancer, who announced he had been axed from ‘Strictly’ last month, is currently wowing audiences up and down the country on his ‘All Night Long’ tour.
He says he and the other dancers on the tour were left shaken when their bus burst into flames, triggered by a faulty fuel pipe.
He told The Star on Sunday: “The bus caught fire… it was quite horrific. All of [the dancers and crew] were standing there in their underpants in the middle of the night and had to go to Tesco to get a change of clothing so they could go to work the next day.“
Luckily nobody was hurt in the incident, and Brendan praised his co-stars’ mentality, who insisted ‘the show must go on.’
“It just shows how amazing they are,” he added. “But we are OK. The show goes on. We had two shows that day… a matinee and an evening performance. I would not have been surprised if they had said, ‘We are a bit in shock, we are going to have to stay off… you will have to do it without us’, but they didn’t.
“All sorts of things happen over the course of a 56-date tour. But I work with the best and they showed their true mettle. Luckily, everyone was OK.“
In January, Brendan admitted he was “in shock” after the BBC decided not to renew his contract with ‘Strictly’ after 14 years on the show.
During an emotional interview with Lorraine Kelly, he said: “They’ve made an editorial decision to not have me back on the show. I’m quite emotional, a bit raw about it.“
Meanwhile, ‘Dancing On Ice’ judge Jason Gardiner has made it clear that he isn’t up for the idea of Brendan joining him on the panel of the ITV series, claiming it would look like the show was getting the BBC’s “sloppy seconds”.
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Jason claimed it would be a bad move for ‘Dancing On Ice’ to sign him.
“It would probably mean that mine or Ashley [Banjo]’s job is out of it then, because they’re not going to have five judges,” he told us. “But who knows?
“Brendan is a ballroom dancer - he’s not a choreographer and his dancing vocabulary is very limited in that sense, because it’s specific to ballroom dance.”
In his typically acid-tongued style, Jason continued: “I don’t know if it would be the best move of ITV to employ somebody who’s been rejected from the court of dancing on the BBC, because then it would look like they were getting their sloppy seconds.”