CASTAWAY Journalist Stacey Dooley tells us about the challenging places her career has taken her

Her career has taken her to some of the furthest and darkest corners of the earth but, as Stacey Dooley tells Sarah Tomczak, she has found magic in the unlikeliest of places

stacey Dooley is standing barefoot in the warm Portuguese sand, swathed in Dior and swinging a conch shell from her hand like a classic girl Friday. It’s a far cry from the unruly house in Brighton where she spent three eye-opening days last weekend. That was with a family who believe in child-led parenting (no teeth-cleaning, no school!) for her upcoming series Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over, which also includes polyamorists, Youtube stars and a 14-year-old cage fighter. The unifying thread? ‘Ultimately, everybody is doing what they do because they believe it’s best for their kids,’ says Dooley. A few days before that, she was shadowing real-life bounty hunters in Denver, Colorado. Such is the juxtaposition of Dooley’s career – one minute in sequins, the next, a bullet-proof vest. She says the only constant in her choices is ‘doing things I feel proud of. I would never write anything off’. It hasn’t always been thus. Although the 32-year-old has spent the past decade making hard-hitting documentaries, mostly for the BBC (and then sashaying around in ostrich feathers for Strictly Come Dancing – but more on that later), she says her career found her, rather than the other way around. ‘When I was younger, there was no real drive or ambition,’ she admits. ‘I was a bit of a nightmare, just did whatever I wanted to do. Then I fell into television and I loved it.’ It was Dooley’s mum, Di, who was handed a flyer looking for clothes-obsessed teens to take part in a BBC Three documentary, Blood, Sweat And T-shirts. At the time, Dooley was 20 and working as a sales assistant in duty-free at Luton Airport. I’ve read that Di was a formidable force. She juggled work in a pub and as a cleaner while raising her daughter, and kept her on the straight and narrow by sticking a picture of teenage ecstasy victim Leah Betts on the fridge door. Dooley became one of six young presenters who were flown to India to see the sweatshops and child labour behind so many of the clothes on the high street. Despite the upsetting things she witnessed, her directness and candour were an instant breath of fresh air compared with the staid documentarians who dominated TV screens. Soon after, the then BBC Three commissioner, Danny Cohen, offered her her own series, Stacey Dooley Investigates. ‘I remember it really clearly,’ she reflects. ‘Danny said, “Don’t feel like you’ve got to conform, don’t feel like you’ve got to mimic how everyone else here behaves. You just do you.” So I thought, let’s just ask the questions, even if they feel very silly and basic and obvious – you’re here to give people a platform and a voice that they wouldn’t normally have.’

‘If they wanted a traditional, established journalist, there are thousands out there. Somebody said to me years ago, “Nobody asks you to do something they don’t think you can do. You’re there for a reason.”’

Yet being a square peg seems to now be both her USP and her Achilles heel.

In person, Dooley’s energy is bright and infectious. She’s a delightful free spirit, bursting into song or busting out some samba moves when the mood takes her, but is also considered and astute when reflecting on her experiences. Most noticeably, she’s extremely polite and gracious; it’s as if she wants you to know that none of this has gone to her head.

‘I’m under no illusion that I’m this talented, capable journalist, but I think as long as you’re willing to put the hours in and try your best, the work will continue to come,’ she tells me. I counter that, with 70 documentaries under her belt, surely she can now recognise she is both talented and capable? She demurs. ‘I don’t struggle with confidence, I know what I can do. But I also know how many girls want to do what I do, too, so the minute you get complacent or start taking things for granted, someone else is going to be willing to jump in.’

Dooley says time has given her the confidence to speak her mind. ‘I feel like

I’ve got the authority to have an opinion now. Blood, Sweat And T-shirts aired when I was 20. I’m now 32, so I can draw from experience. If an exec says something that I fundamentally disagree with, I’ll say to them, “I don’t think

‘I DON’T STRUGGLE WITH CONFIDENCE. I KNOW WHAT I CAN DO. BUT THE MINUTE YOU GET COMPLACENT, SOMEONE ELSE IS GOING TO BE WILLING TO JUMP IN’

that’s right. Can we try both ways? Can we also entertain this approach, as well?”’

I imagine she has a few of these conversations. She’s still far more familiar and impassioned in front of the camera than most of her contemporaries, but she says this instinctively feels right. ‘Some people shy away from being tactile or emotionally invested – I don’t see an issue with that,’ she admits. ‘As long as it doesn’t take over the story, it’s okay to be human when you’re talking about death or drugs or enormous topics that affect people’s lives.’

The topics Dooley covers are enormous, and it seems that there is nothing she’ll shy away from – from confronting paedophiles in Japan to challenging ISIS members in Iraq, or interviewing underage sex slaves in Cambodia or women in Honduras who are trying to escape from violent marriages. She says the stories that stay with her are those of amazing women – it’s part of the reason she wrote her book, On The Frontline With The Women Who Fight Back, published by Ebury last year.

‘In Iraq, we made a documentary about the Yazidi community. These women were systematically raped and abused. Their fathers, brothers and uncles were killed, they were sold in markets. But they were so strong, such survivors, they got themselves away from ISIS. They were held captive, and they got themselves out of that situation, familiarised themselves with firearms and went on the front line to hold their perpetrators accountable. I’ve never met women as strong as them, and so to be able to put their story to a British audience was really important.’

She says maintaining relationships with the women she meets is difficult. ‘Their lives are so chaotic. None of the girls in Iraq will have a phone for longer than two weeks. They’ll take the chip out and share a phone, so sometimes you’ll be in touch for a couple of weeks and then you won’t hear from them for months. There was a girl we filmed a couple of years ago in Kurdistan, northern Iraq. Her sister was missing, she didn’t know where she was and it was all looking quite depressing. Then we got a text, months and months later, saying they’d been reunited. This girl’s family members had been granted asylum in Germany and I had been saying to her, “Why don’t you come to Europe and start again?” But she said, “I’ve got to stay here just in case my sister is alive.” I remember thinking, “Just come to Europe, the chances of her being alive are so slight,” and then she was. Sometimes you get to hear these stories…’

The extremes of Dooley’s experiences are hard to absorb. She recalls being in Iraq when ‘you get out of the car and walk past dead bodies to get to your interviewee’, or filming a documentary where ‘it’s children and there’s sexual abuse and really dark shit going on’. I wonder how she manages to process all of this when she gets home, and if she ever has therapy? ‘It’s been offered but, for whatever reason, I haven’t felt it necessary just yet,’ she says. ‘I’ve got an amazing director, a brilliant producer, and you can see if someone’s struggling or they found that interview really emotional. We look after each other.’ She adds, ‘Ultimately, I do believe this: there are more goodies than baddies in the world. Every harrowing situation I’ve been in, I’ve met really remarkable people trying to overcome the bad. You meet amazing NGOS [non-governmental organisations] and charity workers who have given up their lives to help other people – sometimes total strangers – and that sort of restores your faith in humanity. You

‘ULTIMATELY, I DO BELIEVE THIS: THERE ARE MORE GOODIES THAN BADDIES IN THE WORLD’

sometimes have to look really hard, but there are those magic people trying to fight for those who are really struggling.’

When you look at the dark, dark places Dooley has been, it’s really not a surprise that she signed up to Strictly Come Dancing last autumn. ‘Work was so intense, and I love it, I really do, but it can be emotionally draining, so when Strictly came along I thought, “I fancy that.” It’s a classy show, it’s incredible. I felt really lucky to be able to do it.’

She spent four months spinning around the Strictly studio with her dance partner Kevin Clifton, each week winning over more of the general public, until she finally held aloft the Strictly Glitterball trophy at the end of the series. (Although she points out, ‘I never got 40 the entire time; my highest was a 39. Craig [Revel Horwood] never gave me 10.

Not that I’ve held on to it or anything!’)

It’s no surprise, then, that the public has been somewhat obsessed with Dooley – and her relationship with Clifton – ever since. Although she now counts small kids and grannies among her biggest fans

(‘When you go on the tour, you see five-year-olds who’ve practised the routines and are sitting next to their mums and grandmas – everybody loves it!’), the tabloid attention is less appreciated. I ask how she’s coping with the intrusion. ‘You have to allow people to think for themselves and you can’t pass judgement,’ she shrugs. ‘I don’t let outsiders worry me too much, I really mean that. I’m in Iraq filming really remarkable women telling me they’ve lost their babies, you know? So, if somebody’s gossiping or saying they don’t like me, in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not the end of the world.’

She has 729,000 followers on Instagram and, naturally, in among the ardent admirers are those who are less kind. She says she leaves them to it, until it becomes too much to bear. ‘I’m not going to kick off and argue with everyone, but I am also not going to sit and smile like a nodding dog. I know who I am, I know the woman I want to be and I’m going to stick to my guns.’

So where will those guns take her? ‘I love England, but I wouldn’t mind living abroad for a couple of years. I do love America when I’m there. I hope to still be making documentaries, and maybe there’s another book in me. I would love a family. When I was making the fascinating families series, I thought it must be a beautiful feeling to have “your team”. Maybe one day.’

Until then, she has enough to keep her busy – she’s off to Nigeria to report on Boko Haram in a matter of weeks, followed, in a manner of extremes, by a presenting stint on The One Show, covering Alex Jones’s maternity leave. Perhaps she’ll also find a moment for some downtime (she’s debating taking July off). She says her happiness is podcasts (she loves Joe Rogan, The High Low and ‘a great one from inside a prison in California with inmates, called Ear Hustle’), her ‘muggle friends’ (lots still from her Luton

Airport days), cups of tea with oat milk in bed (‘posh milk! I’m very middle-class now I work in telly!’) and of course her mum Di, famous for her Strictly ‘pitch invasions’ and just about Dooley’s biggest fan. ‘She’s quite gobby, so I suspect that’s where my mouth comes from,’ Dooley says with a smile. ‘But I love that she’s just sort of unapologetically herself. She doesn’t try to be anything she’s not, she’s loyal and she’ll defend you even if you don’t deserve to be defended. She’s wicked.’

I imagine Di feels quite similarly about her brilliant daughter. And with good reason.

‘I KNOW THE WOMAN I WANT TO BE AND I’M GOING TO STICK TO MY GUNS’