Charlotte Hawkins
‘I’ve been hit by the “other” Strictly curse’
There is a moment during every series of Strictly Come Dancing when a contestant experiences the real-life version of the anxiety dream where you’re walking down the street and suddenly realise you are completely naked. It all seems to be going so well and then, inexplicably, the days of intensive training fall out of their head and they are stopped in their tracks, unable to remember the next step, unable to do anything other than stare panicstricken at their partner and shuffle.
Last Saturday, slap bang in the middle of the cha cha cha, Good Morning Britain presenter Charlotte Hawkins became the first victim of the “other” Strictly curse. After a particularly tricky spin she promptly forgot the rest of the routine, meaning her partner Brendan Cole was forced to pull her through what was left of the dance. A grilling from the judges resulted in a measly 12 points, putting her at the bottom of the leaderboard. It was, she says, utterly mortifying. The memory still sends shivers down her spine a week on. “It was one of the worst moments of my life,” she says, not to put too fine a point on it. “We trained for hours and hours and you know you’re going to be a bit nervous, but I thought I had it under control.
“I felt like I’d stepped off a cliff edge and was free falling and I just looked in Brendan’s eyes and was like ‘I don’t know what to do’. I was completely numb, I’d snapped out of character and was standing there on the dance floor as just Charlotte trying to fumble my way through some steps.”
She was hurt by the judges comments (Craig pronounced her efforts “a complete dance disaster”, while Bruno quipped “well, she’s very pretty when she stands up”) but she was particularly upset at the verdict of two former Strictly professionals, James and Ola Jordan, who said that she might have got more points if she had “just stood still on the dance floor”. “I was like… er, thanks,” she says cringing. “I know it’s going to live to haunt me. In years to come I’ll be doing something and they’ll introduce me with that video. ‘This is Charlotte, she’s known for doing a really awful cha cha cha on Strictly’.”
Luckily for Hawkins, she has a knight in shining armour in the form of her partner, Strictly veteran Brendan Cole (who won the first ever series 13 years ago with another newsreader – Natasha Kaplinsky, with whom he denied having an affair). Cole has spent the past week fighting Hawkins’ corner, adamant that she was badly treated by the judges. “I have a lot to say about last Saturday… here goes,” he wrote after Sunday’s results show. “It was definitely a tough night at the office and maybe the scores were just! What I object to is belittling someone who has worked hard and is clearly upset at the situation.
“This can be humiliating at the best of times and laughing at another’s misfortune is disgusting and although Strictly is just an entertainment show, we invest time and emotion into it and therefore it matters to us who take part.” Hawkins is hugely appreciative of her partner’s valiant attempts to defend her honour. “I was really touched that he felt he wanted to speak out like that. He didn’t need to do that.”
The 42-year-old should really be accustomed to a bit of public sparring – for four mornings a week, Hawkins does battle with Piers Morgan on the GMB sofa, a position she seems to handle with remarkable calm. But then she has spent her career presenting alongside the bulldogs of British morning telly, co-hosting Sunrise on Sky with Eamonn Holmes for seven years before jumping ship to ITV in 2014. “When you’re sat next to people like Piers and Eamonn, you really have to up your game, you never know what’s going to be thrown at you and you have to be able to cope with that.”
We are talking as she rearranges her false eyelashes before photographs, having, she admits somewhat sheepishly, been wearing them since she was last on air 24 hours ago. “I’m so bad at putting them on myself, so I just thought I’d sleep in them and then I wouldn’t have to grapple with glue first thing this morning,” she says as she fixes her immaculate face.
It is, in any sane person’s eyes, early to be doing an interview (8.30am) but for Hawkins this is a lie-in. Most days she is up at 3am to head into London for GMB. What is her approach, then, for handling Morgan? “Everybody has their own ways of dealing with Piers. He can be a bit of a handful in the mornings,” she says, before admitting: “I get the greatest joy from discovering that I’m right and he’s wrong about something. It’s moments like that which I hold on to and treasure.
“You’ve got to pick your battles, though, because if you went up against him on everything you disagreed with, we wouldn’t get any news out in the mornings. But Susanna [Reid] is there; I think between us we manage to keep him in check.” Morgan is – maddeningly, she says – revelling in watching her efforts on Strictly. “He keeps calling me ‘Twinkle Toes’. He’s loving it. His mum has told him off now because he’s not being nice enough, so at least I’ve got her on side.” Then there’s her own little team of supporters – her husband of nine years Mark Herbert (an executive at drinks firm Pernod Ricard) and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Ella Rose, who rather unfortunately keeps asking: “Why is Mummy hugging a man on TV?”. You can always rely on children to call out any underlying awkwardness.
So how does Mark feel about the other dreaded Strictly curse? “As much as he said ‘yes, absolutely go and do it, I support you 100 per cent,’ I thought – is it going to be a bit weird for him? The fact that I’m dancing like that with another man?
“I don’t know how I’d feel if it was him dancing like that with another woman. I don’t think I’d take it as well as he’s taking it.”
It’s one of the many aspects of the Strictly experience which have taken some getting used to, she says. “You get used to being very close to somebody who’s not your husband. You get used to the fact that everybody’s a lot more tactile.
“It’s the same with the outfits – all the dancers walk around without a care in the world about their bodies, and there’s something really refreshing about that.”
Though she did request that her dresses weren’t too racy. “I said: ‘Look, I’m a news presenter, the skirts can’t be too short, I don’t want anything too revealing’. In a few weeks’ time I might be like ‘Yes! Make those outfits smaller!’”
For now, she says, she’s focused on getting through tonight’s Argentine tango without putting a foot wrong. “I’m hoping I can prove to the judges that I can dance a bit. And you’ve got to do things that make you scared. I feel more full of life than I have done for a long time.”