Inside Strictly’s battle to put scandal behind it: Celebrity contestants reveal ‘breathtaking’ backstage changes in new series…. and how producers are fighting to stop it happening again

With a shimmy of the shoulders and a side-step away from any more scandals, hopefully, Strictly is back to celebrate its 20th year. ‘I’m really, really sorry about what’s happened to certain people but I would say Strictly is getting it right,’ says the singer Toyah Willcox, one of the contestants for this milestone series. ‘The things they have put in place are breathtaking. I’ve never met a team like it. We have a psychologist with us. We have talent management with us. They listen with a quality I’ve not experienced in a long time. They respond. It’s been quite remarkable.’

The BBC is doing all it can to win back the trust of viewers and contestants as it investigates what happened last year, when Amanda Abbington walked out early and made accusations of abusive behaviour against her professional partner Giovanni Pernice. He’s left the cast, while strenuously denying her claims, as has dancer Graziano Di Prima, who is alleged to have kicked his celebrity partner Zara McDermott. An internal inquiry is being held.

In the meantime Strictly bosses have appointed a welfare producer to look after the celebrities during this series, and another for the professionals. On tonight’s show we’ll find out which pro the celebrities are paired with, before next week’s first live shows. Someone will be there to watch over every rehearsal.

The comedian Sarah Hadland, best known for playing Stevie in Miranda, says, ‘It feels like everything has been done to make sure that any of those situations don’t arise. I feel comfortable with that.’

Some previous male contestants have also complained, and Nick Knowles, the long-time presenter of DIY SOS who is part of the new line-up, says, ‘I think it’s important that people are listened to and they’re taken seriously, which it appears they have been. There is any amount of help and support available, both mentally and physically.’ He goes into this with no dance training, at the age of 61. ‘Bits of me are knackered but they’ve already made sure I’ve got physio support. I’ve spoken to psychologists about my state of wellbeing. I know who I can talk to if I have issues. So, yeah, all I can say is that everything appears to be in place.’

We’ve all got our favourite Strictly memory from the past 20 years, whether it’s Ed Balls riding Katya Jones Gangnam-style in 2016 or the jaw-dropping moment Rose Ayling-Ellis turned off the music to show us what it’s like to dance deaf in 2021; but Toyah goes all the way back to before the show was even born. ‘I was doing a BBC show called Fasten Your Seatbelt in the Negev desert with the woman who created Strictly at the time she created it,’ she says. ‘We were sitting around a campfire in a wadi and she said, “I can’t believe there hasn’t been a programme like this.” She created Strictly Come Dancing and the next year it started, so I feel very connected to it.’

Toyah was in Israel making a spin-off from the travel show Holiday, training as a camel guide. ‘When I first saw Strictly I thought back to being in the middle of the desert, just me and the camel, the cameraman and the producer.’

That executive was Fenia Vardanis, who had the idea of resurrecting the vintage ballroom competition Come Dancing but pairing celebrity contestants with pro dancers. The title was borrowed from the gloriously camp movie Strictly Ballroom for a sense of fun. Vardanis was given a bonus of £4,000, a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates, but never earned a penny from royalties. ‘I’m not saying this in a bitter or twisted way. The champers and the chocolates were very nice,’ she said when Strictly had been going for ten years. ‘At the time, I promise you, everybody thought it would be a flop so it was a risk – I mean ballroom dancing on a Saturday night?’

Toyah looked on from afar as Strictly became the biggest show on TV, but then caught the eyes of the producers in lockdown when she started making hilarious videos at home in Pershore, Worcestershire, with her husband, the guitarist Robert Fripp. The first video saw Toyah in a slinky dress trying to teach her comically stiff other half, 78, how to jive. ‘It got 100,000 responses in five minutes. Then we thought, “OK, we’re going to keep going.” Two months ago we hit 133 million.’

Toyah says: ‘I was born with a twisted spine and my feet were clawed, so I’ve had physio all my life. I’ve had a hip replacement. I hope to show people age that dancing is for everybody’

Toyah and Robert put out videos every Sunday, covering classic songs. As for Strictly, she gave an interview earlier this year saying, ‘If they don’t choose me now, it’s not going to happen.’ She explains today, ‘I’m 66, I just don’t know how my body will be next year. Strictly takes intensive work to make your limbs and joints move in a way you don’t use them every day.’

The punk princess had hits with I Want To Be Free and It’s A Mystery in the 80s and continues to tour with a band while also working as an actor and presenter. She has danced in the West End. ‘I’ve done Calamity Jane, I’ve been Sally Bowles in Cabaret, but I was chosen because I was imperfect as a performer. I’ve never done anything that needs this amount of refinement.’

There seemed no future in dance for baby Toyah back in 1958. ‘I was born with a twisted spine and my feet were clawed, so I’ve had physio all my life,’ she says. ‘I’ve had a hip replacement. I’m doing this because I hope to show people of my age group that dancing is for everybody, even if your joints are stiff, even if you’ve got to watch your back.’

As she goes off to have her photo taken Sarah Hadland wanders across with her hair up, in her underclothes, waiting for a dress. She’s as warm, waspish and funny as her character Stevie. ‘I watch Strictly religiously with friends. We used to dress up – I was always Kristina [Rihanoff], my favourite dancer – then we did routines and had cocktails and watched the show.’

She’s still in a Strictly WhatsApp group with James Lance (Trent Crimm in Ted Lasso) and Sian Gibson from Peter Kay’s Car Share. ‘Everyone said, “Hadders, this is you. You’ll be in your element.” I’m scared I won’t like it as much as I think, but if the days I’ve had so far are anything to go by, I couldn’t be happier.

The punk princess had hits with I Want To Be Free and It’s A Mystery in the 80s

‘All everybody wants to do is make you look glamorous and shovel glitter and spray tan on you. When [costume designer] Vicky Gill put my launch show dress on me I cried. The work that’s gone into these costumes, you think, “I’m part of something really special.”’

Sarah, who lives in London, is protective of her private life; but one member of her inner circle is ready to come out of the shadows. ‘My mum Jill is the biggest Strictly fan. She’ll probably be in the studio as much as she’s allowed. She was a childhood ballerina who went to the Royal Ballet School and was Alice in Alice In Wonderland on the BBC when she was 13 or 14.’ But the fierce discipline of the times proved too much. ‘So she went to work in Harrods, met my dad there and thanks to that I’m here now.’

Sarah’s friend, Doctor Who star Alex Kingston, is another supporter, despite putting her foot in it a few years ago by saying she wouldn’t want to go on Strictly with Sarah because ‘I discovered she’s a trained ballet dancer. Hang on a minute! That’s not fair!’

That was not helpful as Strictly fans are on the lookout for anyone with an advantage, but Sarah insists, ‘I think she got the wrong end of the stick, because I’m not ballet trained. I think she mistook me for my mum. My ballet is pretty shocking.’ Sarah has danced on the West End stage though, in Cats and Grease. ‘I hold my hands up to that, but I was 19 or 20. I’m now 53, so I think we can allow for the 30-year acting career that’s happened in between!’

The only dance training Nick Knowles has had was in Argentina earlier this year when he learned a few steps of the tango while making a travel series. ‘It’s a beautiful dance but it’s also very manly. If I’m nervous of anything, it’s the bouncy things, the Charleston and stuff.’

He’s surprisingly well acquainted with dancers, though. ‘I grew up around it. I’m from a family of five kids on a council estate in Southall. My older sister was a ballroom dancer. My middle sister had a ballet school in the Cotswolds. My youngest sister travelled the world as a dancer.’ As a boy he watched them train. ‘I used to join in a bit, but my dad was old-fashioned and when I got to six or seven he was like, “That’s enough of that. You’re playing rugby now.” Which, don’t get me wrong, I love.’

DIY SOS has been going for 25 years and he has also hosted quiz shows like Who Dares Wins and Break The Safe. ‘I expected my sister to laugh at me doing Strictly because we have this thing in the family, all the guys. When the music starts at a wedding we get up and dance really badly. Everybody goes, “We can’t be as bad as that.” And it starts the party.’

Nick was married to his first wife Gillian until 2000 and they had two children, Tuesday and Charlie. His son TJ’s mother is the dancer Paula Beckett. And his youngest child is Eddie, who was born in 2014 during his marriage to Jessica Moor. Young Eddie made friends with a girl at his play centre and now Nick is engaged to that child’s mother, Katie Dadzie, a businesswoman 27 years his junior. They live together in the Cotswolds. ‘She has a company to run and is a mum so it’s not easy to be there in the studio every week but I know she’ll try her damnedest – and my family are being really supportive to try to make that happen.’

So far the contestants have only had one weekend together. ‘After that I realised I needed to work harder in the gym so that’s what I’ve done over the last six weeks, as well as losing 10 kilos by controlling my diet and eating one meal a day. Keeping off carbs. Protein, green vegetables and an enormous amount of gym work.’

They’re all working hard, but something surprising emerges as you talk to these three: none of them are intimidated by the judges. After 20 years of watching others have their paso dobles pulverised by Craig Revel Horwood and co it seems this year’s dancers are a little less afraid. ‘You haven’t taken part in Strictly until Craig’s had a go at you and Anton has critiqued you pithily,’ says Nick Knowles. ‘That’s all part of the fun isn’t it? It’s all big pantomime stuff.’

• The Strictly Come Dancing launch show, tonight, 7.20pm, BBC1 and BBC iPlayer.

From sports stars to singers, the full line-up

If any of our three Strictly hopefuls are feeling the pain in training, they may be able to get some tips on recovery from the sporting greats in this year’s line-up. Olympic hockey player Sam Quek (below left), sprinter Montell Douglas and three-time gold medal swimmer Tom Dean are all taking part alongside England footballer-turned-pundit Paul Merson (below centre).

From reality TV come Pete Wicks of The Only Way Is Essex and Love Island star Tasha Ghouri, who has a cochlear implant (below right). Actors Jamie Borthwick from EastEnders and Shayne Ward from Coronation Street are joined by singers JB Gill from the band JLS and Wynne Evans, an opera star best known for being the man in the Go Compare! adverts. Dr Punam Krishan is a GP in the NHS, as well as a doctor on breakfast television. Completing the line-up – and perhaps facing the biggest challenge of all – is the comedian Chris McCausland, who is blind.

‘There’s fabulous potential in this group,’ says Toyah. ‘Some because they’re incredibly youthful, some because they have the most unbelievable disability you wonder how the hell they’re going to do this; and others because they’re just drop-dead sexy.’