The Stacy Dooley Effect

From the frontline to the dancefloor, Stacey Dooley defied all the odds to become TV’s golden girl. But it could have worked out very differently

- Tracy Ramsden

Stacey Dooley was a 19-year-old perfume sales assistant working the shop floor at Luton Airport when this happened. A customer had been watching her meticulously remove every bottle from its glass shelf, before giving it the polish of its life. No bottle of Issey Miyake, Joop! or Dior’s Fahrenheit would leave her counter without a little Dooley sparkle.

It’s been 13 years since she was scanning boarding passes and flogging perfume at Luton Airport, and that Dooley “sparkle” has taken her a long way from Bedfordshire. Today, the 32-year-old is a big star, as famous for her hard-hitting BBC Three reportage series as she is for winning last year’s Strictly Come Dancing. Yet success has not dimmed traces of that people-pleasing salesgirl.

She arrives half an hour early for our lunch, and hovers apologetically by the table. “Do you want me to come back later?” she asks, knotting her hands together like a nervous schoolgirl. Draped in an oversized coat and baggy joggers, she looks delicate, almost bird-like, halogen-red hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. From some angles she is reminiscent of Anna Kendrick, in others, a young Patsy Kensit. But it’s when she speaks that you know exactly who she is – that broad, Bedfordshire twang slicing through the genteel hum of the restaurant.

“From the start, it was just mum and I for a while, and then my sister and stepdad came along,” she explains, when she talks about growing up in Luton. “Everything [Mum’s] done she’s done for me and her family. Things were tricky, she was working three jobs at a time, cleaning people’s houses, working in pubs and shops.” She pauses. “She still works in TK Maxx.”