My Strictly Diary ‘Loads of people have shown their knickers’
Our columnist talks about her fiery dance debut, why she kissed Giovanni, and that flash of flesh
I’m still on a high from Saturday night, but on Sunday I felt like I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. I was absolutely wiped out so I sat in my sister’s hot tub for a few hours. When you’ve given everything to a performance you’re completely drained afterwards. My husband Paul [Daniels, the magician] and I used to feel like that after every show.
The judges’ comments were what you dream of. The hard thing now is to keep at that level as their expectations will be higher. I think that Shirley Ballas is going to be great. I thought she came over as being very elegant and you do respect her as head judge. As with Len Goodman, you really take note of the criticisms.
I’m learning the Viennese Waltz to Billy Joel’s She’s Always a Woman to Me this week and the technique is much harder. There are two sections of the routine that I have to compose myself for when I’m coming out of the spins, of which there’s probably about six in one go. And I’ve got two pivots: they’re the ones that really make you dizzy.
It was great to get into the studio for rehearsals last Friday, but you don’t do a great deal. You run through the dance three times so that they can get the camera angles right. What I found most strange was the feeling of the dancefloor – it’s less slippery than the one in our training room. On the Saturday rehearsal I dropped the tambourine and made a couple of mistakes, so I had to focus after that. I went to my dressing room and watched a film about racing driver Graham Hill. Paul taught me that you need adrenalin but you also need to be calm. Because I’m such an excitable person I have to work on that.
I found the skirt of my paso doble costume much different to the one that I’d been practicing in, which was easy to pick up and created a big circle above my head when I lifted it. The one on the show dress was only half that and a completely different fabric. I only had one go with it before the live show. So instead of completely letting go I was having to think about where I was grabbing it and how far I could pull it up. Afterwards, everyone was talking about the knicker flash, but when you’re performing you can’t think “Am I showing my knickers?” (the dresses are made with a leotard base, so it’s not actually your knickers.) But it’s fine – loads of people have shown their knickers before!
I never thought that I’d ever be able to kick my leg up like that again. My partner Giovanni [Pernice] has shown me that it doesn’t matter what age you are, if you keep doing it you keep the suppleness. As for the kiss at the end of our routine, it wasn’t planned by me at all. If I’d have thought about it I wouldn’t have done it. It just felt right. My mum thought that I’d bitten Gio as he still had lipstick smeared on his face when we were talking to Claudia. He still can’t believe I did it, but it’s about letting your guard down. Gio’s getting used to me now and knows that I can disarm him. There are moments when he looks at me and says “When the cameras are rolling and the audience is there, I don’t really know what you’re going to do, Debbie!”
Debbie was talking to Rachel Ward; Strictly Come Dancing is on Saturday on BBC One at 6.45pm