Oti Mabuse has no regrets after quitting Strictly – just her own show!

is still coming to terms with the biggest benefit to her post-Strictly life.The joy of being faced with actual food, and being able to eat it. 

The two-time glitterball winner, who left the show after the 2021 series, is rejoicing at what happens when you don’t have to worry quite so much about fitting into a sequinned dress the size of a hanky.The idea that dancers can eat what they like, she says, is rubbish.

‘You have to take care of your body. You have to look a certain way. You have to be light enough to execute certain moves. I wasn’t able to eat what I wanted for so many years.’ 

And what happened when she stopped dancing?She started to eat, and enjoy it. ‘You know when you walk into an all-you-can-eat buffet,’ she says, miming scoffing everything in sight. 

‘It was like I was at Disneyland, going, “Whaaat? I can eat whatever and whenever and wherever I want!”‘

It’s been like that ever since. ‘I probably went overboard,’ she says. ‘I think it was a coping mechanism. 

‘Food is my thing.I enjoy the smells, I love the taste. It’s only in the last few months I’ve got to the point where I’ve realised I don’t have to have a burger every day to prove I’m free. 

‘I’ve calmed down. I’m eating more vegetables, working out again, getting the heart pumping.It feels good.’

How did she deal with the weight gain, though? ‘I put on loads of weight, but to be honest it didn’t make me feel bad. I didn’t feel as if I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t feel horrible. I’d look in the mirror and think, “Oooh, look at that ass, girl,” or, “Oooh, look at my boobs.” 

‘I mean, people around me noticed and said, “You’ve put on loads of weight,”‘ she adds with a disapproving look.She gives those people short shrift. 

‘First, we shouldn’t be talking about women’s bodies. Second, why does it matter? I’m not promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. I’m working out. My mind is mentally strong. Those are the things that should matter.

‘I actually quite like the idea that I can choose to look like an average normal woman, with a chest and hips and a bum. 

‘I mean, it’s fine to look like a Strictly professional – they look like athletes, shiny and strong – but there’s nothing wrong with looking normal, and I want to eat what I want. 

‘I don’t want to conform to some stereotype that denies my lifestyle and my African DNA.’

We are in a dance studio at the moment, where Oti’s husband and one-time dance partner Marius Lepure, 40, is hard at work coaching.Where was he during her all-day-buffet phase? Trying to remove her from the burgers? 

‘Hell no, we were in the same boat. Do you think I’ve been eating dinner alone?’ she shrieks. ‘He’s from Romania where for every meal you have four courses – soup, meat, main and dessert.And you do that three times a day!’

It’s eight years since Oti burst onto the Strictly dancefloor, all legs and hair and attitude, and aged just 25. ‘A baby!’ she says today. 

‘I was so shy, so worried.Would people think I was too loud, too much? I was not from the UK and I knew that people were watching this first-generation African child on their screens.’ 

Growing up in front of them presumably? ‘Very much so. As an older woman now, I’m a very different person.’

Oti, love, you are 32.Less of the ‘older woman’ rhetoric. She throws her head back and laughs – a laugh that ricochets around the room and alters the atmosphere.

Little wonder the TV offers came pouring in, even before she realised herself there could be life outside Strictly.

From the vantage point of now having her own ITV1 chat show, Oti Mabuse’s Breakfast Show, she talks of the pressure of those early days.Meeting the then Duchess of Cornwall, now Queen Camilla, was a pivotal moment in realising that her un-Britishness might be OK. 

She and her celebrity partner at the time, actor Danny Mac, were invited to a charity event at Buckingham Palace. 

‘Camilla came up to me and said, “You and Danny Mac and that samba!” That was a moment.It took everything to a different level. I was floating in heaven. The royals are watching me? I did have to say to myself, “Chill out, Oti.”‘

She won the coveted glitterball not once but twice, a feat only two of the professional dancers have managed (the other is Aliona Vilani), and is the only one to have done it in consecutive years, first with Kelvin Fletcher in 2019, then with Bill Bailey in 2020. 

‘I was literally obsessed with winning Strictly,’ she says.‘I would eat, sleep, drink and think winning Strictly. There was nothing else.

‘You’re in a bubble, on a treadmill. Only when you step off it do you realise, “Oh my God, there are all these things I can do now. I can sleep on a Sunday. I’m not waking up at 3am thinking about somebody’s cha-cha steps.” I walked away from all those things and I’m still alive.’

Her sister Motsi is still a judge on the show, and Oti tells me they’re actually seeing more of each other now they don’t work together. 

‘I saw her every week but we couldn’t talk because if someone saw they would say, “Nah, it’s not fair.” Now we can talk, laugh, hang out.I was in Spain with her for her birthday recently and I went to the Coronation with her. She was going to Eurovision too and she said, “Wanna come?”‘

Oti didn’t.‘Motsi loves Eurovision but I’m not there yet.’ She did watch at home, though, and raves about Hannah Waddingham’s presenting, citing her as a great example of a woman who’s segued from one entertainment career to another. 

Who are her other role models?Her Strictly colleague Claudia Winkleman (‘witty, funny, warm’), Alesha Dixon (‘golden and beautiful’) and AJ Odudu. ‘AJ has been presenting for 15 years now and worked as a cleaner on the way. You look at women like that and you just feel inspired.’

She wants to join them, but it was a huge gamble to walk away from Strictly.‘It hadn’t really been done before,’ she says. ‘You didn’t see female Strictly professionals do it. It’s why I have a lot of admiration for Janette [Manrara, who quit dancing on the show to present the companion programme It Takes Two].’

Oti’s motivation is a new challenge.‘I won twice, so it was a question of, “Now where to?” I wanted to start from scratch again, to feel excited, disappointed, to get a job, not get a job, fall down, get back up again.’

She’d tested the waters with judging stints on The Greatest Dancer, The Masked Dancer and Dancing On Ice, but her first standalone gig was at the helm of dating show Romeo & Duet.It bombed, and she was heartbroken, but she says she’s since learned it’s par for the course in the TV industry. 

‘It was a big job, my first. I wasn’t scared to do it but I was scared about whether I could do it well. The thing I’ve learned is that it happens to everyone.Everyone has that show that doesn’t match up to expectations, that doesn’t connect. There are shows you love that won’t get commissioned. You have to learn to get up again.’

Is she a sore loser? ‘No, I’m a good loser.You can’t win all the time in dance, but what you can do is get better. So even if I fail, even if I disappoint myself, I will get better. I don’t want to lose all the time, though.’

Her chat show is produced by Amanda Ross, who spearheaded the careers of Richard and Judy, but it’s on at 8.30am on a Saturday, which is a tricky slot.Oti does a great job of defending the show – great topics, interesting guests, such as Peter Andre and comedian Al Murray, ‘and there are people awake. Parents up at 6am. That slot duit123, is a great place to learn. It’s not an end – it’s a beginning.’

Oti’s beginnings are well documented.Her mum was a teacher, her dad a lawyer. She and Motsi left South Africa because the opportunities for a ballroom dance career simply didn’t exist there.

Their other sister, Phemelo, is the CEO of a renewable energy company. ‘She’s one of the few women in South Africa doing that,’ says Oti.‘She’s really driven. I think my parents are in shock when they look at us. They grew up in apartheid South Africa, so we’re living beyond what they thought we could accomplish. But to us they always said, “If you feel you will work hard, and you have a passion for it, then go, go, go.”‘

There is sadness, though.There was a half-brother, Neo (they all shared a mother, Dudu, but the girls had a different father), who took his own life when he was just 18. Oti says she never really knew him. ‘I was just one when he died, so Motsi [who’s nine years older] knew him better.’ 

But his death must have impacted the whole family?‘I think it made us the way we are. That thing of “be healthy, be good, be ambitious, be safe, be mentally OK, be strong”. My mum’s a machine. A beautiful machine. Her attitude was, “Let’s concentrate on the kids who are still here, and love them and make sure they’re good and protected and inspired.”‘

There have been other tragedies too.In March Oti lost a relative she thought of as ‘another sister’. Tlhogi was the daughter of her cousin, but lived with the family when she was growing up. ‘Motsi and Phemelo were older, but she was closer to my age so we grew up as sisters.’

Tlhogi had a rare autoimmune condition called systemic sclerosis, and it would prove fatal.Oti had no idea how serious it was. 

‘We thought she had eczema, but it’s a disease that affects the cells. The skin starts to harden, the knuckles crack, the skin turns darker. It affects the organs too, and there’s no cure. It’s genetic, but I don’t have it.’ Tlhogi’s death left Oti reeling.‘I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. She was beautiful. She was going to turn 30 this year.’

We’ve strayed into darker territory, but maybe Oti’s newfound freedom means she can concede that her life hasn’t always sparkled.‘Oh, my life is not sorted at all. I’m not bubbly and happy every day. Sometimes I’m down. I’m far from my mum and dad, who are getting older. And changing career at 30 was nerve-racking.’

This is where Marius comes in. She met him when she moved to Germany in 2012 and they became professional partners.They married in 2014, just before she was offered Strictly. ‘I realise how lucky I was. Marius moved to England for me. He had to make many sacrifices for me, and he had his own goals.

‘He’d be working in Iceland, Romania, Canada, but he would get back to spend the days I had off with me.Sometimes he would only be able to get back for a few hours, but he’d come to Blackpool just so he could cuddle me before a show.

‘Whatever I want, Marius helps me get it. He helps me remember why I’m doing what I’m doing.He’ll say, “Think of where you started out. Think of how far you’ve come.” He’s my biggest cheerleader.’

• Oti Mabuse’s Breakfast Show, Saturdays at 8.30am on ITV1 and ITVX.