Helen Skelton has acknowledged all of Gorka Marquez's support for her in an appreciative Instagram post, referring to him as her 'wingman' before she 'swaps partners' for the upcoming Strictly Come Dancing live tour.
It's now been three weeks since Helen and Gorka competed in the Strictly final, losing out to Hamza and Jowita for the Glitterball trophy, as millions tuned into watch them at home. While victory evaded them, there was delight for the couple when they finally got a perfect 40 out 40 for a reprise of their Couple's Choice routine to Mein Herr from Cabaret.
Judge Craig Revel-Horwood declared it a performance worthy of a win and many viewers felt it should have earned Helen and Gorka the trophy, meaning they were very much looking forward to seeing them do it on the Strictly live tour, which will visit arenas up and down the country from the middle of January.
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However, while ex Blue Peter host Helen will be taking part, Gorka will be missing in action, with Helen instead dancing with Kai Widdrington, who recently won the Strictly Christmas Special, alongside Coronation Street star Alexandra Mardell. Gorka appeared to give a very public seal of approval to the move as he commented on the Strictly tour Instagram post with an applause emoji.
And Helen is making sure that he knows how grateful she is to him, before she teams up with Kai. On Sunday evening, Helen uploaded a highlights video of her time on Strictly, include clips of her performances with Gorka and made sure to mention him in the accompanying post, writing: "As the frozen Princess said LET IT GO. but before I do, I’m posting this flash back to the strictly final for three reasons: one it’s taken me this long to work out the drop box/video clip situation."
Moving onto Gorka, Helen continued: "Two: there’s about to be a whole lot of strictly tour spam that doesn’t involve @gorka_marquez and I need to mark this chapter with an acknowledgement and appreciation of my wingman. Three: These are memories that make me smile and sometimes it takes a couple of weeks of hindsight to really appreciate what went down on and off the dance floor."
After tagging several of her Strictly co-stars in the post, Helen ended: "You are all just phenomenal!!!!! So so much love for you lot! Can’t wait for you to go around the country and get all the appreciation of the nation that you all deserve!! "
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