Danny John-Jules has reflected on his time on Strictly Come Dancing, admitting he now finds the show to be “dirty” and “filthy”.
The Red Dwarf star was an early favourite when he competed on the BBC ballroom show in 2018, but the latter half of his time in the competition was blighted by tabloid rumours accusing him of “bullying” professional partner Amy Dowden, which they have both repeatedly refuted.
“My conscious is clear over all of it,” he insisted at the time. “It seems to be turning into a vendetta.
“For some reason, some people don’t want me to be successful on Strictly. It’s more than just a Strictly story. This is personal.”
Asked about his time on the BBC dance show during a new interview on the podcast My Time Capsule, Danny maintained that stories written about him in the media during that time were false.
He explained: “The thing about Strictly was, it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going into a well-oiled machine, which is the biggest show on telly. And I already knew when I went in there what they were expecting of [me], and because I wasn’t giving them anything to chew on, they just went out and made it up.”
Danny continued: “They came up with this cockamamie story about bullying, which was dog-whistling, basically, [claiming] that I was bullying my partner.”
“The slap in the face moment is all over me again,” he later added. “Even when you get to that level, you’ve still got the face-slappers. And it’s baloney. Every word of it, baloney. I just want to be a performer, but I’ve got to deal with face-slappers.
“It’s a dirty show, on that level. On that level, it’s a filthy show. It’s based on tabloid stories, you know?”
Back in 2019, a BBC rep dismissed accusations from Danny that the show had “created stories” about him during his tenure.
“There were two scenarios; either someone was backstage selling stories or it was manipulated by the press themselves,” he previously claimed. “Now if the BBC heard something that wasn’t true why didn’t they say, ‘That’s not true?’. If it’s not true, say it’s not true.
“If you don’t defend me, that’s your business. If you do defend me that’s your business. The BBC never said it wasn’t true… they created the stories.”
A BBC representative told HuffPost UK in 2019 that this suggestion was “categorically untrue”.
When contacted by HuffPost UK in response to the Death In Paradise actor’s latest comments, a spokesperson reiterated that claims Strictly producers were behind stories accusing Danny of bullying were “categorically untrue”.
Danny previously implied back in 2018, when the negative stories about him first began surfacing, that the claims were rooted in racism.
After being voted off the show, Danny declined to be interviewed on spin-off show It Takes Two, although his professional partner Amy did appear solo, once again denying claims he had bullied her.
Listen to Danny John-Jules’ full interview on the My Time Capsule podcast here.