The actress whose complaints against her dance partner ignited the wave of bad press around the BBC’s entertainment show Strictly Come Dancing “fears the BBC will bury its own findings,” according to the UK press this weekend.
A friend of Amanda Abbington, who withdrew from the 2023 series and later alleged she had been subject to abuse by her dance partner Giovanni Pernice, told The Mirror newspaper that the BBC didn’t publish their findings of an internal investigation because they were due to be revealed the same week former star newsreader Huw Edwards appeared in court over making child abuse images, and “they didn’t want two catastrophes in one week.”
The unnamed friend added to The Mirror: “They delayed it because of Edwards. We can’t imagine they’ll do anything apart from carry on sitting on it and try to bury the investigation.”
Pernice left the show ahead of the new series, but denies any allegations of wrongdoing made against him. Another dancer Graziano Di Prima also left the show this summer, fired by the BBC after allegations that he kicked his celebrity partner Zara McDermott during rehearsals last year. Di Prima gave his first interview this weekend in which he denied kicking his dance partner, said they remained friends and that he hadn’t been given a chance to explain away the claims or find out what it was exactly he was accused of.
The new series of the hit show – which has been sold to territories around the world, including the US where it is named Dancing with the Stars – is set to launch in the next fortnight, with the latest celebrity line-up announced in full this Monday. It is the 20th anniversary of one of the BBC’s most successful ever shows, but goes into this important season with a cloud over it from all the stories emerging from behind the scenes. The BBC itself last week published an exclusive investigation in which 15 members of the show’s production team complained of their treatment by senior producers and celebrities on the show.
