Learn to jive with Strictly's Oti Mabuse and her new children's book Dance With Oti

Virgin Radio

28 May 2021, 12:43

The reigning Strictly champion and children's author joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about getting the kids jiving with her inspiring book and her role on the new brilliantly bonkers The Masked Dancer.

She told Chris about her sequinned childhood: “We’ve been dancing all our lives. Dancing was that thing that we knew we did from Friday and Saturday till Sunday. We had no weekends free. We were just constantly dancing, either travelling to Blackpool or Germany or actually just training and doing training camps.

“I don't think I even had a choice, I was four! My mum was like, you’re going to do it because I don't have time to get you into anything else, but I really just loved it because it was all I was doing all my life. It makes you happy, you get to express yourself and wear pretty dresses and make-up. 

“Music has that power to really influence your change in mood, make your body feel like it can move and it did that to me all my life.

“I guess when you move your body you release certain hormones and feel-good feelings and that's what exercise does to your body and your mind."

She admitted: “I’ve got a lot of energy and I like to use it up but I should be doing 10ks, but I'm not. I'll do one and then I'll be like, oh, and then that's enough for the week."

On being super disciplined, she said: “I am but I also have a side to me that's not. I can be late, I can be that girl you’re like, what are you dressed like? I'm a bit of a mess but then when I'm working I’m disciplined. There are two sides."

On this weekend's premiere of The Masked Dancer she said: “It's Saturday night at 7pm. I'm so excited. We shot it already and first of all it's Jonathan Ross who is hilarious, Davina McCall, Mo Gilligan and Joel Dommett and we had the time of our lives guessing these characters.

"You get a rubber chicken, a beetroot, you get a flamingo, a knickerbocker glory doing the most amazing movements. It's insane. At some point I felt like I was in a spaceship and I went to a party somewhere in the galaxy and somebody told me it's okay. It shouldn’t feel okay, like, what is going on?"

On the stars being able to let their hair down behind their disguise unlike in Strictly, she said: “A lot celebrities feel really self conscious about coming out and dancing in front of millions of people and with The Masked Dancer you can hide behind a little bit of shielding, so it helps. 

“Not being seen and people not knowing who you are makes it that more joyous.”

Dance With Oti: The Bird Jive is

 out now.

The Masked Dancer starts tomorrow at 7pm on ITV.