I’ve been in the bottom of the pits and I’ve rubbed shoulders with the King and the Queen,” Johannes Radebe tells me. “I’m a boy from Zamdela who never thought life could possibly turn out this way.” He lets out a hearty laugh, shifting back – as he tends to do – into dazzle mode. “It did give me resilience, my darling.”
Tonight, Radebe will make his debut as one of three new presenters guiding viewers through the revamped Strictly Come Dancing, alongside Emma Willis and Josh Widdecombe. And he’s the only one with connecting tissue to the show’s earlier Tess-and-Claudia incarnation, having served as a professional dancer on Strictly since 2018. He admits he’s nervous, but he’s also made of strong stuff. Growing up in South Africa during the final years of apartheid, the 39-year-old withstood homophobia and a period of homelessness while pursuing a dance career in Johannesburg. Reading an autocue seems a cakewalk in comparison. Still…
“I want to lock myself up,” Radebe purrs, like Eartha Kitt. He’ll tune into tonight’s pre-taped launch show on his own. “I want to keep an open heart and mind because I’m my biggest critic. I don’t want to have opinions around me while I’m watching it. Afterwards, I’ll come out and face the world.”
Nerves aside, Radebe is otherwise giddy as we chat over Zoom. He is holed up in his London flat, still coming down from recording the first new Strictly a few days before we speak. The live shows – a whole other challenge in themselves – properly start next Saturday. Today, Radebe lives up to his warm reputation, and is just as elegant with his softly spoken answers as he is on the dance floor. It’s easy to see why mums across the nation have fallen for him. A powerful memoir and a celebrated run on the West End earlier this year, in Kinky Boots, couldn’t have hurt. He is, to put it succinctly, a star.
So it’s no real surprise that he’s been tasked with captaining the Strictly ship into uncharted territory. As well as out of those choppy, scandal-infested waters. The show is entering its 24th series, its first in its history without Tess Daly, and its first without Claudia Winkleman in 12 years. The stakes have never been higher. Contrary to recent reports, though, presenting duties will be “evenly distributed” between Radebe, Willis and Widdecombe, who’ll be joined by a raft of celebrities – everyone from EastEnders’ Lacey Turner and Gavin & Stacey’s Melanie Walters to dog trainer Graeme Hall – also getting used to the new format.
For Radebe himself, his new job came as a surprise. Just months before he was asked to try out for it, he was contemplating his future with the show. “I had gotten to a point where I was like, ‘What’s next in my life?’” he explains. He remembers having long chats about it with his mother. “She said, ‘What are you thinking for 2026? Are you going to come back home? I’ve missed you.’ That’s the thing a lot of people don’t realise – I don’t live with my family because I am where I am. I’m alone. So, I’ve been craving time with them and seeing my niece and nephew grow up.”
Then there was the spectre of turning 40, which had already led him to think about slowing down on his dancing for his body’s sake. “My bones are tired, my bunions are tired,” he laughs. “I made it my life’s mission to find other opportunities outside of this.”
So how did he find himself up for such a huge promotion?
“Lauren, I don’t know myself!” he hoots.
What he does know is that he received a call early in the year from a Strictly producer, who asked whether he’d be interested in auditioning. “I was like, ‘Johannes, the thought of even saying yes to this opportunity – who the hell do you think you are?’” he says. “But they said, ‘We fully understand you’re not a broadcaster or presenter. We know you are somebody who understands the fabric of the show. You love the show and we will guide you.’ If I didn’t have that conversation with him, I wouldn’t have even said yes to that chemistry test. But I also thought… nothing ventured, nothing gained. If anybody else had this opportunity, they would grab it with both hands, right? So why not me?”
After various callbacks and chemistry readings, Radebe found out on a Zoom call that he’d be presenting the show with Widdicombe and Willis. “I screamed,” he grins. “I was alone in the apartment. I think my neighbours must have thought, ‘What is going on?’ But that’s how it played out.”
Since then, the trio have been bonding and swapping showbiz notes. Radebe has given them the lowdown on who’s who and what’s what at Strictly, while they’ve provided him with a crash course on comic timing and presenting. “That’s what got me through the launch show, honestly,” he gushes. “I think Emma held my hand throughout the whole process.”
But he knows that his time on Strictly could have ended very differently. With the show’s new format came a complete shake-up of the professional cast; Karen Hauer, Gorka Marquez and three other dancers moved on to make way for five fresh faces. It’s part of the reason Radebe was ready for change. “Our journey on the show as professional dancers is very short-lived,” he says. “I know people have come and gone and I know that it would have been [my] trajectory. But I’ve always said that if they got rid of me or if I ever stopped, I would [love to] come back and work as part of the crew, just to be part of the magic.”
The brutal nature of showbiz doesn’t faze Radebe, though, given everything he’s been through. He’s been open about the challenges he faced growing up in the mining town of Zamdela, raised by a supportive mother but a father who became violent with alcohol. A lover of Barbie dolls and his mother’s make-up, Radebe was a target of homophobia at school, which at times left him contemplating suicide. Later, he scraped together as much money as he could to live in Johannesburg, paying taxi drivers to sleep in the back of their cars or sneaking into the dance studio where he taught to stay overnight. After working on cruise ships for seven years, he was finally cast in the South African version of Strictly in 2014. Four years later, the UK Strictly came calling.
“I’m grateful now, looking back on everything I’ve been through,” he says. “The bad. The ugly … Because I wouldn’t appreciate what I have now if I didn’t go through all of that. It’s a blessing and a curse to know life in both extremes. I pinch myself every morning when I wake up, [knowing] that I’ve created a life I’ve always dreamt of.”
In his early dance days, Radebe was told by a rival that he wouldn’t “amount to anything” in life. He’s grateful to the UK – of which he became a citizen in February – for proving them wrong. “For a long time, I thought they were right. It took me until my thirties to realise they were wrong,” he says. “It took this country and being seen and appreciated and being championed the way I have in the past eight years for me to come to that realisation.”
Strictly has been one of TV’s biggest star-making machines for decades – which only really dawned on Radebe during his 2022 solo stage tour Freedom. Suffering from a bout of imposter syndrome, he was tempted to cancel beforehand. “I just thought to myself, who am I to think that I’m going to sell out theatres around this country?’” he recalls. “My agent said, ‘You don’t realise the impact you’ve had doing what you do and doing what you love.’ I thank God for that encouragement because I wouldn’t have done it honestly.” Radebe pauses. “He did also say to me, ‘If you pull out, our producers will sue us because we’ve signed a contract already.’ I was like, ‘Okay!’”
He still experiences those pangs of self-doubt, he says. But he’s better at dealing with them now. After all, just look at the material.
“I never thought I’d be an author, an actor, or a West End performer,” he says. “Now I’m presenting this show. I didn’t have this in my plans for my life. So I’ve got the tools to deal with imposter syndrome, and I’ve got proof to back it up.”
‘Strictly Come Dancing’ returns to BBC One tonight at 7.25pm
