Oh my Gleb! He’s TV’s hottest hunk since Ross Poldark... and doesn’t he (and his wife) know it
IT’S 9am on a Sunday morning – a little early for meeting sex gods. But standing in front of me is 6ft 1in of traffic-stopping good looks. Sea-green eyes stare right into mine and impossibly white teeth gleam. You’ll forgive me for feeling a tad flustered.
This, after all, is Gleb Savchenko, Strictly Come Dancing’s new Russian professional dancer whose hunk-tastic arrival in the nation’s living rooms has sent the female population, and the Twittersphere, into a phwoar-fuelled meltdown.
Following his animalistic group dance and furiously up-tempo cha-cha in the first week, the internet lit up with unashamed lust to declare him The Sexiest Man On Television. Not since Poldark abandoned his shirt for a spot of scything has there been such a feral reaction.
‘Oh my Gleb!’ tweeted one admirer. ‘I’ll just pick my jaw up off the floor,’ said another. ‘Not sure if I’m starting the menopause early but I’m definitely having a hot flush after watching Gleb. #HOT, #SWOON!’
Even Tess Daly seems a little hot and bothered, and has taken to fanning herself whenever he mambos past. And despite his saggy jogging bottoms and baseball cap worn backwards, ‘Glebby’, as Claudia Winkleman calls him, is even more gorgeous in the flesh.
He’s a one-man embodiment of the infamous Strictly curse. So perhaps that’s why today he’s flanked by his very tall, very blonde and very beautiful wife of nine years, Elena Samodanova, herself a pro-dancer, a formidable judge on the Russian version of Strictly and mother of his four-year-old daughter.
‘Gleb has fans all over the world,’ Elena, 32, says. ‘We were walking through Los Angeles with our daughter when this group of about six high school girls started screaming, “Wahhhhh, Gleb, Gleb!”
‘Olivia was quite scared, she was only two. The fans don’t care if he’s married. They’re just in love with him. They asked if I could step aside so they could take a picture. I said, “Of course, do you want me to hold the camera?” It’s part of the job and it’s always been this way. I have to accept his admirers and he has to accept mine.
‘And people are very different in America,’ Gleb says looking totally mortified. ‘It doesn’t happen here.’
‘Not yet,’ interjects his agent, sitting nearby.
Elena continues, apparently unperturbed: ‘Another time an air stewardess gave him her number while I was sitting next to him on the plane!’
‘It’s not just the girls either. The air steward kept wheeling his trolley past during our flight and asking if Gleb wanted any more peanuts.’
Jennifer Lopez chose Gleb to appear alongside her in a shampoo advert. He can be spotted caressing the thighs of Paris Hilton in an X-rated music video. He even has his own line of underwear. So spare a thought for the poor husband of Anita Rani, Gleb’s Strictly partner. When they were paired, the One Show and Countryfile presenter, 37, gushed that she’d landed ‘the hottest boy in class’.
So how does Gleb cope with this ocean of temptation?
Needless to say, it’s Elena, who has the answer: ‘We have normal rules, like any other couples. He belongs to me and I belong to him.’
It turns out that Gleb has form for straight talking, having previously shown impressive candour on a US radio show. Referring to America’s Dancing With The Stars, he revealed ‘a lot of people are ****ing their celebrities’. But before Auntie gets a touch of the vapours, he insists he’s not one of them.
However, he can do a nice line in flirting. A teenage figure skater, his dance partner on the Russian version of Strictly, received a fulsome response to a recent tweet. Gleb replied: ‘You are the best and I am also crazily happy to have met you. I can’t wait til we see each other,’ prompting another social media flurry. But no such luck with me. When he opens his perfect mouth, out comes a stream of carefully modulated PR-speak. He loves his ‘amazing fans’, is so pleased to ‘give people joy’ and take them with him ‘on the journey’. Oh.
He might be a hunk but I’d much rather go to the pub with his wife.
‘For me, it’s funny,’ she says. ‘I’ve seen him doing the dishes; I’ve seen him with pimples. First thing in the morning he’s not the Gleb you see on camera. He has annoying habits: he’ll brush his teeth for about five minutes. It’s like having a new dress. At first you’re excited about it and then later it’s just another thing in your wardrobe.
‘But he’s charming and sensitive. He cried when our daughter, Olivia, was born.’
The couple – who both say they are fans of President Putin – live fulltime in Hong Kong with Olivia.
Last month Gleb turned 32, and for his birthday Elena bought him… brown, long-sleeved pyjamas. ‘He’s cold here,’ Elena explains. ‘We both wear pyjamas in bed, we have a child. Well, y’know, I wear sexy ones just in case,’ she adds with a wink.
Gleb was born in 1983 in a southern suburb of Moscow to a music teacher mother. His father was a manager in an IT company. He admits he started dancing to woo a girl in his class at the age of seven. ‘Her name was Dasha and she was blonde,’ Gleb says. ‘I saw her signing up for a dance at our school so I signed up too.’ She quit shortly afterwards and left him to fall in love with dance instead.
His childhood, he says, was great despite the family not having much money. ‘It was comfortable but it was a difficult time when the Soviet Union ended. We had food, but we didn’t have luxury things. Mum used to make my dance costumes and Dad drove me to competitions.’
His grandparents were also supportive if a little bemused.
‘I remember telling my grandfather that I wanted dancing shoes for my 13th birthday. He said, “What boy wants dancing shoes?” Maybe in the beginning it was weird, but dancing became popular in Russia.’
While other teenagers went to parties, his weekends were taken up with dance competitions, accompanied by his parents and younger sister. ‘When I didn’t do very well, mum would tell me I was rubbish. She’d grab me and say, “C’mon, you look horrible, your arms are floppy, keep your posture, we’re not here to watch this crap.” It always worked for me.’
THIS is my role now,’ Elena says with a smile.
‘Yeah right,’ Gleb says. ‘Yesterday, when she was watching Strictly in the BBC studio, I waved at her. She waved back before mouthing, “Focus, focus. I’m watching you.”’
They met in 2001 when they were both 18 at a Moscow dance studio. Elena turned professional at 16 and was a Russian champion. Gleb was still an amateur. ‘She was the hottest girl ever. All the boys were in love with her,’ Gleb says. Elena wasn’t remotely interested in him, however. ‘I thought he was a boy without any facial hair,’ she says matter-offactly. ‘I asked her out. Five times,’ Gleb continues. ‘On the sixth she agreed but only because she wanted to see the movie I suggested.’
When Gleb moved to New York in 2004 to pursue a modelling career, Elena followed him and they started both dating and dancing together, winning several international dance championships. But they weren’t always in harmony.
‘We fought every day,’ Elena says. ‘We threw things at each other: water bottles, towels, a shoe brush.’
Nevertheless, they married in Moscow in 2006. Their first dance was a rumba with lifts that were so elaborate Elena’s wedding dress nearly fell down.
In 2012 they competed against each other on the Australian version of Strictly (Gleb and his partner,
‘He’s so sensitive – he cried at our baby’s birth’
I want to think people go ‘wow’ because of my work, not because I’m a pretty face… but it’s better to be handsome than ugly, right?
model Erin McNaught were voted out first). He then went to the American show in 2013 and it was after that he was hand-picked by Jennifer Lopez to dance alongside her in an advert for L’Oreal.
‘We danced for eight or nine hours together. She’s beautiful,’ Gleb says, misty-eyed.
Elena continues to dance, but also works as a judge on the Russian version of Strictly where, earlier this year, she got to judge her husband.
‘She was tough,’ Gleb says. ‘Like Craig Revel Horwood is here. But she’s straightforward and she always tells me the truth. Sometimes I hate the truth.’
Then British Strictly – ‘the best one’ – came calling. BBC Worldwide has sold the format to more than 40 countries. Each version is different. In one episode of the Argentinian show, for example, a couple stripped stark naked in the course of the dance before covering each other in red wine. ‘Her underwear came off on the final beat,’ Gleb says, naughtily. ‘That would never happen in Russia. Would it here?’ We’re probably safe for the time being, I say.
‘In the Russia and US shows you can do jazz and contemporary dance. Over here it’s still a lot of ballroom,’ he moans.
Strangely, he says that in America, the avuncular Len Goodman is always the bad guy. And Gleb says the budgets on the Russian version put the BBC to shame.
‘If you want a sheep for your number they’ll give you a real one,’ he says. ‘For one of my dances they built 12 cars and blew them up. For another they got a real eagle to fly in and land on the celebrity’s arm. And if a celebrity wasn’t very good, they’d get people in from the circus to perform in the background.’
Gleb’s beautifying regime sounds annoyingly low-maintenance compared to the hours his female counterparts endure. He does have spray tans (’there’s nothing wrong with that’) but doesn’t wax his chest (‘that’s not manly’) and is able to shovel carbohydrates into his mouth without consequence (‘I eat everything’) despite going to the gym only ‘if I have time’. And he absolutely WILL NOT wear pink. ‘I’m not being a diva, it’s just pink doesn’t suit me. Those brightpink, see-through, tight shirts are yuck. I just don’t see myself in a pink sequined shirt going, “cha, cha, cha”. I don’t want to be cheesy.’ Surely, that’s Strictly, I say. ‘Well, maybe, but it’s not me.’ He admits he’s a hard taskmaster with his partner Anita.
‘Yes I’m tough, but I want to teach Anita how to dance and I won’t stop until she gets it. We’re practising six or seven hours a day. But I’m lucky, she’s a natural.’
Before he sashays off to plan his next Strictly showstopper, he leaves a poignant parting shot. ‘Y’know it’s a serious thing we do, and it’s not easy. People like to watch handsome boys dance, but there’s a lot more behind it. I want to think that people go “wow” because of my work, not because I’m a pretty face. But… I’ll take it. It’s better to be handsome than ugly, right?’