Anton du Beke "doesn’t know" whether he’ll be asked to do ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ this year.
The 51-year-old professional dancer has appeared on the ballroom and latin show since it began in 2004 but he has admitted he’s still unsure whether he’ll make the cut for the forthcoming series because he hasn’t started contractual discussions with the producers yet.
Speaking on ‘Lorraine’ today (07.02.18), he said: "You never can [take it for granted]. I feel the same every year after the series has finished you do go, ‘OK well we’ll just have to wait now and see.’ You can never take anything for granted. We don’t really know what’s going on. It sounds so sort of disingenuous, and I don’t mean it to because I’m not trying to do that, it’s the way it works, they call everybody at about the same time and then the discussions start.
"The one thing you do know immediately with a phone call like that is whether you’re not going to be asked to come back – and that’s a phone call you dread and never want.
"To the positive, it’s a sort of a scenario where we get invited to come back and then we go into contractual discussion. So there’s all the technicalities. It is a process. All being well, you don’t get the other phone call. That one you don’t want. No one wants that phone call."
Anton is devastated that his friend and co-star Brendan Cole – who joined the show at the same time as him – has been axed from the competition and will really miss him this year.
He explained: "It was one of the saddest things I’ve watched on telly. I was heartbroken for him, for me a little bit as well, I’m going to miss him enormously. I can’t begin to tell you. There’s something about being with Brendan on the show and having been there since the beginning – there’s only a few of us left.
"I’ve known Brendan for a long time anyway and we’ve been friends for many, many years and being on the show together was lovely for me. You’ve got a brother-in-arms sort of thing."
Anton du Beke doesn’t know if he’ll return to Strictly Come Dancing
