Denise van Outen has enjoyed a glittering entertainment career over the last two decades which really kicked off with her role presenting The Big Breakfast in 1997. However, things could have been very different.
The 48-year-old actress, singer, dancer and presenter has revealed that she once turned down the opportunity to host Strictly Come Dancing. The much-loved dance programme has been a staple of the BBC One's yearly calendar since the first series in 2004.
Denise took part in the series herself back in 2012. She partnered with professional dancer James Jordan and the couple secured top of the leaderboard seven times. However, controversy arose when viewers criticised her participation in the competition because of the advantage of having had previous stage experience.
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But Denise and James did make it all the way to the final and finished as the runners-up alongside Kimberley Walsh and Pasha Kovalev, behind winning couple Louis Smith and Flavia Cacace.
However, Strictly could have been a completely different experience for her if the shock confession she made while speaking to entrepreneur and investor Matt Haycox on The Matt Haycox Show is anything to go by. During their chat, Matt and Denise spoke about how some opportunities lead to other doors being opened.
Speaking about previous jobs, Denise said: "I’ve turned everything into another opportunity. Or I’ve learned something from it. So I kind of see it as a good thing, really."
It is then when Denise went onto reveal that she was once offered a hosting role on Strictly, which is currently being hosted by Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman. But it turns out she could have been in Tess's shoes years ago. "When they first came up with the idea of Strictly Come Dancing, I knew Bruce Forsyth really well," Denise explained.
"I’d done a few shows with him, we used to sing together. He came to me and approached me to be his sidekick on Strictly Come Dancing and said to me ‘there’s this show, it’s all ballroom, it’s going to be celebrities’. He said ‘I want to open the show with a song and dance number with you, close it with you, because he knew that I danced and I sang."
Denise then recalled: “I remember sitting there and going ‘Bruce, it sounds really boring,'" before adding with a laugh: "So they gave it to Tess Daly."
While she worried she had made a mistake at first, the mum-of-one said she has no regrets. "At the time, I remember it was a huge hit and I was thinking ‘oh, maybe I was a bit of an idiot there turning that down,'" she said. "But actually, when I look back – because Tess has done it for many years, and just kind of does that, and she’s associated with it.
"Whereas I went on to do Broadway, I’ve done film, I’ve done theatre in the West End, I’ve done so many other things. And I wouldn’t have had such a varied career." Denise added: “So actually for me, it worked out."
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