DANCING TO A DIFFERENT TUNE: ‘I'M CHALLENGING MYSELF – I WANT TO GROW!'

AS SHE TAKES ON HER FIRST SOLO PRESENTING ROLE FORMER STRICTLY STAR OTI MABUSE TALKS TO OK! ABOUT THE ADVICE SHE’S HAD FROM HER SHOWBIZ FRIENDS AND WHY SHE WANTED TO MOVE HER CAREER AWAY FROM THE DANCE FLOOR

- TRICIA MARTIN

News that Oti Mabuse had quit Strictly Come Dancing came as a shock to fans and her fellow dancers alike – but the 31-year-old had been considering the move for some time.

Despite her lifelong love of dance, Oti had been longing to try something new. And after presenting stints on Steph’s Packed Lunch and panel roles on The Greatest Dancer, The Masked Singer and Dancing On Ice, she felt ready to fly solo.

Talking ahead of her new show Romeo & Duet – on which blindfolded singletons pick out the people whose singing voices they find attractive, then go off to learn a duet to perform with them – she says, “I’m challenging myself, you know. What I wanted to do, honestly, was grow. I want to, hopefully, be blessed with a long career, which means I can do other things, whether it be a sports programme or a dancing programme. I did Morning Live. Hopefully, I can do all these things and actually respect what they’re about and bring that part of myself to those shows. So, yeah, I guess it was about growing outside of dancing.”

And as Oti takes on her first big gig since quitting the hit BBC show, she reveals she hasn’t been short of advice. “I worked really closely with Dermot [O’Leary]. He came in once and taught me to work with an autocue – how to read it, how to edit it… I was texting him all the time. And Steph McGovern has also had a really huge impact.”