STRICTLY SMITTEN AGAIN

When James Cracknell was asked to appear on BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing a year ago, his wife Beverley Turner vetoed it.

‘She made some comments about not wanting a “Russian fa**y” in my face every week. This year it was my decision,’ says James, who separated from Beverley, with whom he has three children, Croyde, 16, Kiki, ten, and eight-year-old Trixie, in november last year.

‘When I told her I was going to do it, she said: “We both know your dancing ability. You’ll be appalling and won’t be there very long.” ’

Last week, the Olympic rower became the first of this year’s crop of celebrity contestants to be voted off the show after achieving the lowest ever score in Strictly history for his jive.

For those of us who watched his partner Luba Mushtuk coax him through his dance moves, it was excruciating.

Judge Bruno Tonioli likened him to a ‘ galumphing Godzilla’, while Craig Revel horwood awarded him just two points for his stiff-as-anoar tango, confiding, ‘you get two points for putting your shoes on’.

To be fair, James cannot hear musical beats and is ‘not a great learner’ after he suffered terrible head injuries nine years ago when he was hit by the wing mirror of a truck while cycling across America. The damage to the frontal lobe of his brain affected his personality and, eventually, his marriage as Beverley despaired of life on what she calls ‘Planet James’.

Their divorce is, he says, ‘amicable, although it varies between how amicable’ and he continues to respect Beverley. So why on earth, didn’t he listen to her?

‘ You’ve got three kids at independent schools, a house to run, a full-time nanny and, when you’re a student [James spent the past year studying evolutionary and behavioural science as a postgraduate at Cambridge, where he rowed for the university in the Boat Race] your earning potential drops.

‘This was also the first time I felt confident enough to do something I wasn’t very good at and not be afraid of looking stupid.’

JAMES

is, by nature, a shy, introverted man. Or, as Beverley once said shortly after they met in 2000, ‘ show me a room of Olympic medallists and I’ll show you a room of insecure people.’

his year at Cambridge is, he says, responsible for this newfound confidence — that and the new woman in his life, Jordan Connell, a 34-year- old American, who shares his newly rented flat in West London.

When she walks in, James lights up like the Strictly glitterball.

Jordan, who met James at Cambridge last October when she arrived to study for an MBA, is a smart young woman who is ‘ridiculously happy’ to have met James.

This is the first interview she has given since her romance with James began shortly before Christmas. After winning the Boat Race, James travelled with Jordan to her native new York where he met her mother Rosemarie, who works on Wall Street. ‘She really liked James. Who wouldn’t? She said she’s happy I’m happy. ‘I like to think I make him happy, too. When internet trolls were making cruel comments about his dancing and ‘wooden personality’ on Strictly I thought, “how can you put that? You don’t know him.” I know he feels things very deeply. ‘ I feel so strongly about bullying online. Try sitting down with the person you love when they’re upset by what’s being said because their children will read it. James does have an amazing personality. he’s funny and kind. It’s the little things he does like going out to track down a bar of hershey’s chocolate for me, which is special because it’s so hard to find in the UK.’

Jordan was in the audience at last week’s live show with James’s close friend and fellow adventurer Ben Fogle to see him voted off.

James continues: ‘She just said, “I’m really proud of you. You really went for it.” So you can’t regret that, although I didn’t feel a million dollars on the self-esteem side waking up the next morning.

‘I genuinely felt for Luba who put so much into it and I was really sorry for the girls [his daughters] who were looking forward to coming to the dance studio this week. They were disappointed about that. So was I. I thought it would be nice to include them in something I was doing. You can’t really include them in rowing.

‘how the kids feel is the most important thing for Bev and me. I’ve got to re-form a long-term relationship with them that really works for all of us. It’ll take time over the next few months to sort it out. The sooner I get this place up and running the better.’

James has only recently moved into his three- bedroom flat. Beverley packed his share of 17 years of married life into goodness knows how many plastic boxes and he doesn’t have a clue how he’ll fit it all in.

James decided to rent here because it’s a stone’s throw from the family home of which he is no longer a part following his decision to study at Cambridge and compete in the Boat Race.

The day after his superhuman victory on the Thames — at 47, James was double the age of many of the crew — Beverley eviscerated him in a newspaper article, writing that going to university to study full-time and train for the race was ‘ an absolute dereliction of parenting and marital duty’.

‘That ferocity, when it’s in your corner, is great,’ says James. ‘That was one of the things I was attracted to and loved her for. I