The Rev Richard Coles has described Strictly Come Dancing as “a wonderful show with a dark heart” and said “no one is surprised” by the allegations that have emerged about the treatment of contestants.
The professional dancer Graziano Di Prima was axed from the show after reports he had verbally and physically abused his dance partner, Love Island’s Zara McDermott. It came weeks after another professional, Giovanni Pernice, was suspended over claims of misconduct, which he denies.
Speaking to Times Radio, Coles said: “I remember somebody who worked on the show for years and years telling me: ‘Strictly is a wonderful show with a dark heart.’ And I never really understood what that meant, but perhaps one of the things that meant is what you don’t see, which is how intensely competitive it is.”
He said few people involved in the show have been surprised by the allegations. “I’ve spoken to both contestants and also professionals about it. And I think no one has been surprised that this stuff has surfaced,” he said.
“I think everyone’s just concerned to see that appropriate measures are put in to mitigate it.”
The BBC has said it is taking “additional steps to strengthen welfare and support” on the show, after recent concerns that are “fundamentally about training and rehearsals”.
They said a member of the production team would now be present “at all times” during training room rehearsals. There will also be a celebrity welfare producer and a professional dancer welfare producer.
McDermott said there were videos of “particular incidents” inside the training room, which are “incredibly distressing” to watch and that she was previously reluctant to speak out because she feared “public backlash” and “victim shaming”.
Announcing he would leave the show, Di Prima said: “My intense passion and determination to win might have affected my training regime. Respecting the BBC HR process, I understand it’s best for the show that I step away.”
Coles was partnered with Dianne Buswell when he appeared on the show in 2017 and said his experience “was uniformly good” and “we had a fantastic relationship, both on and off camera, and I wasn’t aware at all of anything untoward at the time”.
He said he did not condone the behaviour described in the allegations, but “the world of professional ballroom and Latin is extremely competitive”. “These dancers have been doing it literally since they were children,” he said.
“It’s unsentimental, it’s brutal, and they work in regimes which are impossibly disciplined, I think, for people who aren’t used to that. So often it’s a bit of a culture shock for people coming into it.”
Esther Rantzen, who appeared on the second series of the show with Anton Du Beke, told Times Radio the producers of the show should “ask themselves why nobody dares make a complaint when things go wrong”.
She said: “The only worry I have is why it took so long for these complaints to surface. And if I were a producer, and I have been a producer in my time, that’s the question I would be asking myself with a bit of concern.”
When asked why she thought it took so long for someone to come forward she said: “I think it’s become a sacred cow. I think it’s become an iconic programme and I think everybody has inflated it beyond its worth.”