Fleur East spills Strictly Come Dancing secrets and reveals how the show has been a ‘blessing’ for her marriage

2022 Strictly Come Dancing contestant, Fleur East, appeared on The Graham Norton Show last night, discussing the infamous 'Strictly curse' and how participating in the show has impacted her marriage. The Strictly curse has haunted the popular BBC show Strictly Come Dancing for years and the drama caused by it has often overshadowed the sparkly outfits, brilliant dance routines and all-round fun offered by the show each week. 

The so-called curse follows the notion that the show's glitz and glamour is so intoxicating that the celebrities who take part often end up falling in love with their professional dance coaches and subsequently split with their actual partners. 

While the Strictly curse has not yet struck, to our knowledge at least, the show has been hit with some loses. It was announced earlier this week that Kym Marsh has withdrawn from this weekend's show, 26th November, after testing positive for COVID-19 and Tony Adams was also forced to withdraw from Strictly completely due to an injury.

For singer and rapper East, who got a perfect score of 40 in last Saturday's show in Blackpool, the impact of her dancing on the show has thankfully been a 'blessing' rather than a curse for her romantic relationship.

Talking about the BBC One show’s impact on relationships in the newest episode of The Graham Norton Show, Fleur said, "The show’s been a blessing for my marriage, it’s been great. 

"We’ve been together for 12 years and how often in your marriage do you dress up and look different every week, and get to do all these sexy dances in front of your husband? After the Argentine Tango, it was like we got married again! It was wonderful.”

Ahead of the Argentine Tango performance Fleur revealed that her husband encouraged her to "turn up the heat." Speaking on her Hits Radio breakfast show, she said, “[The Argentine Tango is] very hot and steamy and obviously it’s really hard to get into the mode of that! It’s quite awkward when you’re in rehearsals. It’s like ‘this is weird’. But we both said we need to do one where we fully go for it, and we commit to that passion and that emotion.

“So we went for it – and it was quite intense – and my husband Marcel was there watching and at the end of the dance he went ‘hmmm… More!’. I was like ‘What? Are you sure?!’. He said, ‘you need to commit to this and you need to give it 100%’.”

Who is Fleur East's husband?

Fleur East is married to Marcel Badiane-Robin, a French celebrity fashion designer. The pair first met in a bar back in 2009 where Marcel was working as a waiter, but East was not single at the time. A year later they reconnected and started dating before tying the knot in Morocco in 2019.

Why is Fleur East famous?

Fleur East rose to fame after appearing on The X Factor in 2014. While she didn't win The X Factor, Fleur did get all the way through to the final and finished as the runner-up against Ben Haenow. 

The year after her X Factor appearance, Fleur brought out her debut studio album 'Love, Sax and Flashbacks' in 2015 and went on to bring out a second album, 'Fearless', in 2020.

In 2018, Fleur appeared as a campmate in the popular ITV show I'm A Celebrity (Get Me Out Of Here) alongside Emily Atack, Harry Redknapp and John Barrowman, finishing in fourth place.

Fleur now spends her mornings talking to the nation as a presenter on the Hits Radio Breakfast Show.