I WAS A RUBBISH MODEL
Strictly’s Ellie Taylor on her very awkward start in front of the camera – and how her dancing partner helped her finally find her feet
Long before she was a stand-up comic and actor, Strictly star Ellie Taylor was a model, which you might imagine means she has a certain elegance about her. Not the way she tells it.
‘Oh I was rubbish,’ she says. ‘I was tall, but gangly with it. I have no natural ability to hold myself, so on a shoot I’d stand there like a sack of potatoes. It was not the most successful of modelling careers.’
She hated it, and after a nudge from a friend to take part in a stand-up comedy open mic night, she fell in love with making people laugh. Her break eventually came on the UTV comedy talent show Show Me The Funny and she found her niche on shows ranging from Mock The Week and The Mash Report to the Emmy awardwinning US show Ted Lasso.
Yet she confesses that she’s never shaken off that feeling that she should be more poised. ‘I always wanted to be more elegant and in control,’ she admits.
Today though, aged 38, she can say that she finally feels less... well... like an ungainly giraffe. Her secret? Firstly, motherhood. She had baby Valentina (now her biggest Strictly fan) in 2018. ‘After I had my baby I felt more at peace with my body.’
More recently there has been Johannes Radebe, her Strictly partner, whose mission has been to convince her that she can make those limbs glide. ‘I could have done with him on modelling shoots, because he would quite literally put me in the position I needed to be in.’
She apologises for being cheesy about this, but her Strictly journey has been life-changing. ‘That awkward, gangly teenage thing, I never really got over it. But Johannes got me thinking, “Maybe I can be poised and in control”.’
Obviously the series has also wreaked havoc with her home routine. ‘I haven’t emptied the dishwasher for six weeks,’ she tells me when we meet on Zoom. ‘My husband (CNN reporter Phil Black) has had to pick up all the balls I’ve dropped. He even makes my lunch, and dropped it off the other day when I forgot it.’
Dare we mention the Strictly curse? One of the funniest routines Ellie has done was a skit on satirical show The Mash Report, pondering how the dance couples end up having affairs. In character as a newsreader, she told viewers, ‘Experts studying the so-called Strictly curse have been unable to fathom how two people spending days rubbing their genitals together to romantic music could possibly end up sh***ing.’
Today, having experienced the competition from the inside, she confirms that you just get used to all the intimate ‘rubbing’ that goes on. ‘It is a weird thing to be that close and to have to do things like stare into someone’s eyes for that long. Even staring into my husband’s eyes like that would be weird. But you do get used to coming home smelling of another man.’ She inhales deeply.
Doubtless her stint on Strictly will find its way into some comedy routines in the future, but for now Ellie has a new show that she’s fronting, which was filmed before Strictly. It’s hard to know how to describe You Won’t Believe This, but she gamely has a go. ‘It’s a cross between Would I Lie To You? and Line Of Duty, with maybe a bit of Gogglebox going on.’
Four contestants tell a story, but three of them are lying. Two real detectives grill them, and another contestant listens in. If that person can identify the truth-teller, they win a cash prize. If they pick one of the liars instead, the fibber wins the money. It’s an odd hybrid, but Ellie’s an engaging presenter, joking with contestants and adding a bit of banter to proceedings. ‘I absolutely love hosting,’ she says. ■ You Won’t Believe This, Tuesday, 10pm, Ch4.