STRICTLY Come Dancing’s Jamie Laing has told The Sun that he was “shattered” after landing in the bottom two in week one – and his partner Karen Hauer is at “death’s door” thanks to their gruelling training.
The 32-year-old star has gone from strength to strength during his time on the BBC One dance competition after a rocky start, having initially been due to appear last year.
The Made In Chelsea favourite was understandably devastated to be one of the first celebs to land in the dreaded dance-off this series, narrowly missing out on being the first eliminated contestant after the judges voted to send Jacqui Smith home instead.
And Jamie has since avoided being at the bottom of the leaderboard – instead impressing judges and viewers alike with his and Karen’s energetic performances.
Now he has revealed how his confidence took a massive knock after that first week – but how he and his professional partner turned it into a positive.
In an exclusie interview with The Sun, Jamie said: “My confidence definitely got shattered after being in the dance off, I’m not going to lie. It wasn’t that high at the beginning anyway.
“It’s one of those things, Karen just said to me: ‘Look, we get to dance again’, and that’s so true.
“It’s the most amazing opportunity, someone has to be in the dance off and rather than see it as a negative, we get to dance again and that’s what’s great.”
He went on to add that 38-year-old Karen is more exhausted than usual due to all of the extra “effort” she has to put in to training a complete dance amateur like him.
The star said: “I’m 100/1 to win! This whole competition is about a journey. Karen and I are certainly on a journey.
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“I started with no dance experience whatsoever, now I’ve done really hard dances.
“Poor Karen is honestly at death’s door, I think, because of all the effort she’s had to put in with me.”
Jamie was forced to pull out of last year’s series of Strictly before it even began after he hurt his foot during training, being replaced with Kelvin Fletcher who went on to win the show.
And while Jamie may not be the favourite to lift the glitterball this year, he has shown huge improvement – with Jason Bell and Max George the second and third stars to be eliminated, with Maisie Smith and Nicola Adams the others to land in the dance-offs.