Dame Arlene Phillips says there is now ‘more pressure’ on Strictly dancers

Dame Arlene Phillips has said the “pressure now is further for the professionals” on Strictly Come Dancing than it was during her time judging on the show.

The 81-year-old was responding to questions about controversy over the alleged treatment of contestants on the BBC show, in an interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

The results of an investigation, launched by the BBC following allegations made about Giovanni Pernice by former participant Amanda Abbington, have not yet been published by the corporation.

Pernice rejects the allegations, and fellow dancer Graziano Di Prima has also left the show.

Dame Arlene said the show has “become such a big thing” since she worked on it and added that it “didn’t have the stakes as high” then.

Responding to GMB host Kate Garraway, who said she did not recognise any of the allegations from her time on the show, Dame Arlene said: “I think what happened when you came into the show in those early years, the expectation wasn’t as high.

“It was hard, it was tough, and dancing is tough, we go through a lot with our bodies, but it’s become such a big thing.

“Now people have been catapulted to enormous fame, including the professionals.

“The pressure now is further than it was for the professionals, it’s their own personal fame.

“They (the professionals) all have their own shows now; nothing like that happened (when Dame Arlene was judging), it didn’t have the stakes as high.

“The pressure was there, everybody felt it, but you felt it in your training, in wanting to find a way to become a better dancer, but now is another level.”

The veteran dancer was on the inaugural judging panel, working on the show between 2004 and 2008.

In 2009, she was replaced by Alesha Dixon, which led to allegations of discrimination against older women on television, but the BBC strongly denied this was the case.

Dame Arlene also spoke about the early days of Strictly, saying she and her fellow judges did not think it would be a success.

“None of us thought it was going to be a success, it just was small – I could actually say intimate – but no-one other than Bruce (Forsyth) was confident.

“You can see, when you look back at the early episodes, how nervous everyone was, and also we were reacting as if we were just in the studio, as opposed to how it grew into drawing reactions from millions.

“We were just all sort of uncomfortable, we hadn’t had enough rehearsals, we had a production assistant crawling behind us saying ‘Press your buzzer’.

“The way I felt that people were loving it was watching Natasha Kaplinsky grow.

“She didn’t want to do the show, she was a serious newsreader, but she was persuaded to do the show and was so nervous, and then gradually what you saw was Brendan (Cole) and Natasha there every week improving.

“He hardly looked at her on that first number, but they came together suddenly as a couple, they were strong and powerful, week by week, and after about week four – the power of that performance – we all started to switch and go ‘Hang on there’s something here’.”

Dame Arlene went on to speak about a new musical she has choreographed, based on the Gwyneth Paltrow skiing trial, which saw the actress sued by a retired optometrist following a crash at a Utah ski resort.

The musical is currently showing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.