Gabby Logan grew up around competition and sports, and this might have been why she recalled feeling disliked when taking part on Strictly Come Dancing.
Gabby took part in Strictly way back in 2007, partnering with James Jordan, and being voted out in week four.
On Jessica Ennis-Hill’s Gold Minds podcast, she recently revisited that chapter of her life, and shared how it was ‘life-changing’ but not ‘in a good way’ – including the blunt response her husband, Kenny Logan, received when he tried to swap places with her.
She continued, ‘I didn’t know he’d done this. And she said, which is quite kind of in your face, ‘No, Kenny, they liked you, so they voted for you.’
And this is the crux of why Gabby remembers Strictly in not the most positive of lights.
She said, ‘I was only on it for a few weeks, but I had an amazing experience, but also a kind of life-changing experience in many ways, which sounds a bit dramatic… but this wasn’t in a good way.
‘It wasn’t that Strictly was bad for me, per se… It was the fact that obviously people didn’t vote for me, right? And now this sounds a bit pathetic… but you realise when it’s a reality show that’s about whether people like you and I was very much aware that people didn’t like me.”
‘They didn’t like me enough to vote for me… And people really liked Kenny, you know, he was finishing at the bottom but staying on every week. He carried on for another 10 weeks, whatever. He got to the quarter finals and he was rubbish.’
After she was voted off, Gabby felt like she’d faced judgement for being too competitive – something that came naturally to someone who grew up around sports.
‘It was a very sobering kind of experience because in the days afterwards… I kind of felt like, ‘Oh, what was it about me that people didn’t relate to or like? And some of the things that were being written about me were that I was too competitive.’
I think there’s been a real change in the way women are allowed to be competitive openly since then. But at the time, even in 2007, I was seen as somebody who was too determined and wanted it too much and looked too disappointed when her scores were low.
‘I suppose when you come from a sporting background though, you’ve got this idea of it’s a competition. And in a competition, you work hard, you put the hours in, you know, you give it everything and you’re rewarded with a good score.
You train hard and you’ll be good. That was kind of how sports worked. So, this is what I’ll do.’
After Strictly, Gabby was ‘baffled’ and she remembers ‘writing lots of stuff, thinking, ‘How can I change? How can I be a person that gets across the real me that my friends seem to like?’
