Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Katya was crying with relief... I had a cold all week & the live show was first time we got the dance right
Mike Bushell has become a shoulder to cry on for Strictly partner Katya Jones – and is sopping wet from all her weekly tears.
After last week’s dance, he had to hug her when she broke down.
But the bouncy BBC Breakfast sports presenter insists Katya is not sobbing over last year’s kiss with Seann Walsh or this year’s split with fellow dance pro hubby Neil.
No – Mike says it is all his fault. “Last week was the toughest emotionally. I had a bad cold and wasn’t at the races a lot of a time,” he says. “The dress rehearsal was so bad no one would look me in the eye. Katya said, ‘Don’t think about it, don’t watch it’. I kept missing the 10th step and the next 30 seconds of the routine went to pot.
“On the live show, I came up to the 10th step like a horse approaching a fence, in slow motion. I was thinking, ‘Here we go, here we go’. Then the foot landed and from that moment I knew the rest of the dance would follow.
“So at the end, Katya realised for the first time ever we’d pulled the dance off. It was like being 3-0 down at home to a non-league football team then coming back in the last minute. The relief and release of emotions was intense.”
Viewers will feel just as relieved to hear they are not watching Katya, who faced accusations she was drunk after falling in two shows, unravel because of personal reasons. But does Mike feel her traumatic year has left her feeling scrutinised and fragile?
“Crikey, no. I’ve not noticed anything. Neil is so supportive, so I haven’t felt that. Katya’s got so much energy, she’s absolutely on fire.”
Mike, 53, married Emily, 39, in May and has three daughters from his previous marriage – Lucy, 22, Izzy, 20, and Sophie, 16 – as well as a 10-year-old stepson, Josh.
Before slipping on his Strictly kit he was best known for his have-a-go attitude of trying over 500 different sports and falling into a swimming pool during a live interview at last year’s Commonwealth Games – a clip shared over 11.5 million times in a day. He is notoriously clumsy, so he is still stunned head judge Shirley Ballas hailed last week’s quickstep as “sophisticated”. And he says the miraculous transformation from dud-dancer to 32-point slick-mover is down to Katya – and something from his wife’s bottom drawer.
“I changed into my lucky socks after the disastrous dress rehearsal,” he says. “They’re black, really thin and extra-long. I think they might be Emily’s. But they’re definitely not stockings.”
The story of Mike’s romance with Emily is full of fun and shows his bubbly on-screen persona is genuine. Last October, after a seven-month romance, he proposed dressed as Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings. The gag was a bit lost on her, as she had never