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Strictly Come Dancing’s Toyah Willcox has admitted that she turned down two professional dancers due to their “inappropriate age” before she signed up for the BBC ballroom show.
The 66-year-old singer, known for hits including “It’s a Mystery” and “Thunder in the Mountains”, was the second contestant to be knocked out of the competition in October.
The singer has said that BBC bosses were initially keen to partner her with pro dancer Vito Coppola, 34, but she refused due to the difference in their ages.
She also declined the offer to be partnered with Nikita Kuzmin, 26, due to their 40-year age difference. Coppola was instead partnered with Tasha Ghouri, who will appear in this week’s final; Kuzmin was partnered with Olympic hockey player Sam Quek, who was booted out of the competition in week seven.
Willcox told MailOnline that she was against performing “intimate” routines with someone too “young” and that she didn’t want a “young person’s head near her crotch”.
The singer eventually agreed to partner with 42-year-old professional Neil Jones because of his “experience” in the dance industry.
“I did my audition with Vito, who is gorgeous and very energetic. He loved me immediately and said, ‘this is the one, this is the one’ and I’m very grateful for that but it was still nerve-wracking,” she said.
“I told them I did not want to dance with someone when there was a 40-year age discrepancy.”
She continued: “I would have hated to do an intimate dance with someone that young. I said I really want to be age appropriate and dance with someone who is right for my physicality, and I was asked if I would dance with Nikita and I just said, Look, it’s going to look so wrong.’”
“I trusted Neil – he has experience and has the same mental experiences as me. Sarah Hadland and I said we don’t want young people’s heads anywhere near our crotches and I don’t want my head anywhere near their crotches,” she added.
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Willcox continued: “I said, please keep this age appropriate and the team respected that. Nikita is gorgeous but I didn’t want him to be frustrated performing with an old woman.”
Willcox and Jones found themselves in the dance off for two weeks running on Strictly and were sent home after performing a Samba to “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from Little Mermaid.
Following her elimination, Wilcox told host Tess Daly that it “had to be Neil” when she first danced with him.
She told Jones: “I felt so comfortable and safe. You’re a great teacher, you’re a great friend as well. You’ve just given me a new zest for life, that’s the most valuable thing I’ve come away with.”
The competition is currently in its final stages after a semi-final on Saturday night that saw the elimination of Pete Wicks and Jowita Przystal, which meant that Chris McCausland, Sarah Hadland, JB Gill, and Tasha Ghouri made it through to this week’s final.
The Strictly Come Dancing final begins at 6pm on Saturday 13 December on BBC One.
