Secrets of Strictly Stacey

To many viewers, she started the series as something of an unknown, the Bambi-eyed redhead who made documentaries for millennials on BBC3. Just 12 weeks later, Stacey Dooley is not only runaway favourite to win Strictly Come Dancing’s glitterball tonight, she has also proved herself to be TV’S new Golden Girl. However the magic that makes Stacey sizzle on the show is certainly nothing new. As our pictures show, the 31-year-old was born to be in front of the camera.

In shots from her childhood in Luton, Beds, Stacey blows out her birthday candles and beams as she shows off a love of cash... little knowing that 20-odd years on she would be poised to make the big bucks for real.

Last night, Stacey and her dance partner Kevin Clifton were 8/15 favourite to win Strictly, with only Youtube vlogger Joe Sugg and pro-dance partner Dianne Buswell likely to cause an upset. And while the public backlash against trained dancers Ashley Roberts and Faye Tozer may have played in Stacey’s favour, Kevin is adamant it’s also something else. To borrow from a rival show, she has that X Factor. Kevin, 36, says: “I thought she’d be quite serious. Then, once we got in the training room, she’s a massive idiot, in a really lovely way. She’s just as daft as I am.”

Stacey adds: “I’m just so made up that I said yes to Strictly. It has been one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done.

“Kevin is in a league of his own, as a dancer but also as a person.” As she prepares for the final, the documentary-maker, who was awarded an MBE this year, knows life could have been very different. Her Irish father left when she was two-and-a-half. They did not get a chance to reconcile before he died, when she was in her early 20s. Stacey’s “badass” mum Diane worked “really sh***y jobs doing really sh***y hours”. They lived in such a hellish flat that Diane made a nappy-wearing Stacey pose with a dead mouse so she could send the picture to the council.

Life improved when then-barmaid Diane met Stacey’s stepdad Norman Niblock and they had her half-sister, Olivia.

Meg Sheaf, 75, who lived next door at this time, says: “Stacey is just a lovely young girl. She’s a typical Lutonian, very friendly and outgoing. She always had a smile on her face.

“Her favourite saying was, ‘Laugh like your ass is on fire’.” But Stacey says she became a “devil child” as a teenager, skipping school and going “robbing” in shops.

“I didn’t collect my GCSES. I didn’t even do most of them,” she says in her book, On the Front Line With the Women Who Fight Back.

She shunned drugs but friends didn’t. One died of a heroin overdose before the age of 18.

Stacey had a series of jobs, including at the pub with her mum, as a hairdresser and in duty free shops at Luton airport.

In 2008, Diane saw an ad in the Mirror from a production firm looking for fashionconscious teenagers to go to India. This was for what would become the BBC documentary Blood, Sweat and T-shirts, about sweatshops.

Stacey was soon handed her own series and has travelled the world, covering topics from child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Mexico’s drug cartels.

This year she was chosen for the National Council for the Training of Journalists’ list of most respected reporters. Yet Stacey, who has been with personal trainer Sam Tucknott, 30, for three years, has remained down to earth.

She is still told off for using guest towels when she goes home, still dashes to the shops for a three-for-two deal and is still more than happy to strike a funny pose for the camera.

Imagining her life had she not gone into television, Stacey says: “I would probably still be in Luton, which isn’t a bad thing. But I wouldn’t have travelled the world.” And, of course, she wouldn’t be in the Strictly final.

Strictly Grand Final, 6.30pm tonight, BBC1.

I’d thought she’d be quite serious... she’s a massive idiot, in a lovely way

KEVIN CLIFTON COMPLIMENTS CELEB DANCE PARTNER STACEY