'WORKING TOGETHER HAS BROUGHT ME AND OTI CLOSER'

STRICTLY COME DANCING JUDGE MOTSI MABUSE ON SISTERLY LOVE, EMBRACING POSITIVE BODY IMAGE AND LAUNCHING HER FIRST SKINCARE BRAND

-  ZOE CRIPPS

Some celebrities are synonymous with certain months of the year – just think Michael Bublé and December. September, however, firmly belongs to Motsi Mabuse.

The month marks the start of Strictly Come Dancing, when the dancer emerges from her forest – yes, forest – and swaps her idyllic life in Germany with husband Evgenij Voznyuk and their five-year-old daughter for sequins and the samba.

Motsi, 42, admits that it doesn’t take any coaxing to get her out of her woodland home and into the BBC ballroom as soon as a new season kicks off. “I’m starting really to feel comfortable there,” she says.

Motsi joined the Strictly panel in 2019, so it seems it’s taken her four years to get used to sitting alongside fellow judges Anton Du Beke, Craig Revel Horwood and Shirley Ballas.

The show may be hitting its 21st series, but Motsi is particularly excited about this year’s contestants.

“Every single story is special to us, but I’m hoping we get to meet new people whose stories we haven’t heard a thousand times, and who bring something very unique,“ she says.

Motsi gets just as caught up in the Strictly buzz as the rest of us because, she says, she doesn’t get any spoilers when it comes to the line-up. “They don’t tell me anything – everybody knows it before I know it! But whoever’s coming on, bring it on.”