‘Friend saved me from trauma after accident’
Pal helped Strictly’s Claudia to cope with daughter’s fire horror
Penny crams balloons, and herself,
STRICTLY Come Dancing presenter Claudia Winkleman has revealed her clinical psychologist friend “saved” her after her daughter suffered horrific burns when her Halloween costume caught fire.
The BBC’S highest-paid woman, 47, said she needed Professor Tanya Byron, 52, to put her life back together after the traumatic accident left her family “blindsided”.
She had been trick-or-treating with her children when daughter Mathilda’s witch outfit caught fire in 2014.
It forced her to temporarily step down from Strictly as she dealt with the “life-changing” incident.
She became a staunch campaigner to improve fire regulations for children’s costumes, describing the flames as “a birthday candle that kept reigniting”.
She said: “It’s my daughter’s story but I just knew I would need Tanya.
“I did and she truly put me back together again.
“I don’t want to use big words because I have to be respectful to [my daughter] and the rest of the family, but Tanya genuinely saved me.”
She said she used to “replay the trauma” in the wake of the ordeal and struggled not to be hypervigilant with her daughter, now 13, and two sons Jake, 16, and Arthur, eight, who she shares with her husband Kris Thykier.
She added: “Let me just say out loud that people go through much worse.
“I’ve been incredibly lucky and my family have been incredibly lucky but we were blindsided.”
The two became friends after working together on BBC Three show The House Of Tiny Tearaways in 2005 and have released a podcast about dealing with emotional struggles, called How Did We Get Here?
Professor Byron added: “As a parent, you ask yourself, ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen?’ and you put your sense of risk against that. But what about when it has happened?
“Claudia is amazing because she absolutely did get through it.”