My nan’s got dementia but she recognised me on Strictly & said ‘She’s in love with that boy’
Paralympian Lauren Steadman barely recognised herself as she waltzed across the Strictly ballroom in a princess dress, making her nervous debut last Saturday night.
Yet nearly 100 miles away, in front of the TV in her care home in Peterborough, her nan Jackie – these days increasingly lost in a fog of dementia – knew instantly that the dancer on-screen was her beautiful granddaughter. Even though her family had not told her Lauren was competing on the show.
The knowledge that she brought joy to 72-year-old Jackie’s world, if only for a fleeting moment, means more to Lauren than any judge’s score.
“It probably went in and straight out but, just for that moment, I know she enjoyed it,” Lauren smiles. “It comes and goes – sometimes she doesn’t know who my mum is, sometimes she does.
“And her texts don’t even make sense any more, they’re just letters,” she adds. “But she knew me on telly. It was cute.”
And that moment was all the more poignant because Jackie, who Lauren had spent every weekend with as a child, is not only battling one devastating condition but two. For the past few years, she has been fighting cancer as well. “She shouldn’t be alive, basically. She’s a miracle,” says Lauren, quietly.
The athlete’s intense training for this month’s ITU World Triathalon Series – where she won gold in the paratriathlon in Australia, leaving her just two days on her return to rehearse for her first Strictly routine – has meant she has been parted from her nan for four months.
But next week, she and dance partner AJ Pritchard will transfer training to Peterborough, so she can spend muchneeded time with her.
It also seems the pair may have a little explaining to do, as Jackie made another observation last Saturday – she is convinced they’re a couple.
Lauren laughs: “She went, ‘I saw Lauren on TV and she’s very much in love with that boy. They’re in love – I know when people are in love’.”
The 25-year-old begins practising her protestations in earnest on me when we meet ahead of her second turn on the BBC show tonight. “We are both single,” she concedes, of herself and AJ.
“We do get on well but I don’t expect
AJ and I are single & get on well but I don’t expect any romance. I am focused on my sport
there to be any romance – I know myself. I’ve had such a good year this year. I’m very focused on sport and have the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics coming up.
“Right at this moment, if I lost a gold in Tokyo because I had a boyfriend then quite a few people would look at me and say, ‘Um, did you make the right choice?’.
“I have had on-and-off relationships before,” she adds. “But I’m always on the move, in different countries, and training times are awkward. You need someone very understanding.”
The more convincing story to tell her nan, though, might be this one – about her unorthodox method for capturing the look of love in last Saturday’s waltz...
There was barely a dry eye in the house during the moving sequence yet the secret to that convincing performance wasn’t chemistry with 23-year-old AJ, apparently, but with her parents’ German shepherd, Meric-Belle.
“AJ was saying: ‘Lauren, you need to look at me lovingly.’ It took longer to teach me to be romantic than it did the dance,” she admits. “So we kept using Meric, because she’s who I love most in the world. I imagined I was looking at her.” It’s little wonder Lauren’s lifestyle has never allowed for much more than on-and-off relationships.
She was only 14 when she competed in the Beijing Paralympics in 2008 as a swimmer, and 18 at London 2012.
After that, she switched to the paratriathlon and lifted silver in Rio in 2016. She has always been fiercely determined, she says. Born with one lower arm missing, she describes how she has always refused to let anyone help her do things.
“I rode a bike at an early age, I was swimming,” she says. “There were things that took longer – shoelaces, tying hair, painting nails – but I did them,” she adds, demonstrating how she holds the brush in the crook of her arm.
She also salsa dances as a hobby although she insists that the rumours about her teaching it aren’t true, and says it’s nothing like the ballroom style. “I may have to unlearn some stuff. It might be a disadvantage,” she says.
Speaking of her disability, Lauren reveals: “They don’t know what caused it and it was a bit of a shock for Mum [Sharon] and Dad [Adrian].”
Predictably, she stood out at school and although she stops short of using the word bullying, she shrugs: “Kids will be kids. I was fully aware I was the onearmed girl. It’s not a problem.
“I was chubby, geeky, a good girl – and had one arm. I really was chubby,” she laughs, when I raise an eyebrow. “I really like my food and I think sport is the saving grace.
“I lost weight when I started swimming every day at 12.”
But the overriding key to her success, she says, has been confidence.
And that cemented at 14 when she won a scholarship to go to Mount Kelly, a prestigious boarding school in Devon that specialises in swimming – where she ditched the prosthetic arm she had always worn.
“There were three other swimmers with their arm missing. They were like, ‘Why are you wearing an arm?’. One day I just forgot,” she explained.
Now, Lauren only wears one when she’s on her bike. “I won’t wear one on Strictly. It’s probably safer without, and I don’t need it for balance or lifting things, it would just be for aesthetics.”
She insists going without hasn’t caused any problems so far. She’s terrified of the lifts in tonight’s routine – a Charleston – because they don’t involve any hands at all. “I could die,” she jokes.
But I suspect she might be brilliant. This is the woman who achieved A-grades at school while training for two Paralympics, then completed a BA and master’s in business.
Not to mention scooping gold and mastering a waltz in two days last week, back to back. “I just do things,” she shrugs. Like her nan, she says, and her nan’s mum, her great nan Doreen – who is still going great guns aged 97 – she is made of strong stuff.
“Apparently it runs in the female side,” she smiles.
Strictly Come Dancing is on BBC1 at 6.30pm tonight, and 7.15pm tomorrow.