I’m a Strictly winner and TV star but I spent most of the year unemployed – it was terrifying

HE’S a Strictly champion and household television star - but Ore Oduba found himself without work for most of the past year.

For nine long months the stage and screen offers dried up leaving the 39-year-old terrified he may never get another role.

While his situation looks very different now, Ore admitted the self-employed life of a performer isn’t for the faint-hearted.

Speaking exclusively to The Sun on behalf of, he said: “This is the most mental time of the year.

“It's not calm at all. I finished Pretty Woman in September and I received a call two days after to say I got Chitty [Chitty Bang Bang].

“And up until that point, I was basically unemployed for all of 2025. It's just quite terrifying. It's the self-employed life.

“Especially when contracts can be quite long periods. And if you're holding out for something and you haven't got that big chunk taken up, it just looks really freaking empty. So, we've gotten very fortunate to have panto.”

He is currently playing the part of Abanazar in a pantomime production of Aladdin in Royal Tunbridge Wells, before starting 2025 with some downtime ahead of his first lead stage role - Caractacus Potts, made famous by Dick Van Dyke in 1968.

The fun festive production is the perfect preparation for a high-profile tour that sees Ore taking over from stage favourite Adam Garcia.

“I think a lot of performers would say the same thing, it's confidence,” said Ore.

“Being on stage, you feel able to be able to do another production because you're show ready. So, even though panto is very different to, like, a West End production, the production value is both, you know, really, really high.

“There's a little bit of a nod and a wink when it comes to panto. But you go from the prospect of complete unemployment where you think, ‘I will never work again. No phones are going to ring, to go I've got three jobs over the next nine months. I think I'll be okay. 

“It's so barmy. But I just feel very grateful.”

This weekend either Tasha Ghouri, Chris McCausland, Sarah Hadland or JB Gill will lift the Strictly Glitterball, eight years after Ore won with pro partner Joanne Clifton.

It’s a time of year that the former Strictly tour compere holds dear to his heart, even if the aftermath of that success proved tough to deal with.

Reflecting on the euphoric high of being crowned winner in front of millions of viewers on a Saturday night to the comparative mundanity of ordinary life the next day, Ore said it felt like being in a coma.

He explained: “What they're missing is a review show. Because this week comes so quickly, it's gone. Don't get me wrong, the Strictly special for Christmas Day is brilliant, but there is nothing like this week and what the contestants are going through.

"This week it just jacks up tenfold. There's only four of you, in our case there's only three of us couples left, and it feels like a national event.

“Everybody, whether you are a dancer, a contestant, the band, the presenters, the production team, the audience. Withdrawal symptoms. I remember finishing it and just going black.

“It was just dark. I remember just going. I was coming out of my coma going, ‘what happened? I've been on the most transformative four months of my entire life. Saturday night was beyond anything I could have even conceived in a dream world and then somebody just switched the tail’. 

"I lived in Manchester at the time. I'm just walking through in a bit of a daze and see my face on a newspaper every couple of days. What? What's going on?"

Ore acknowledges changes to the pastoral care have been made since his time on the show, but he hopes the finalists have support over the festive season.

He continued: "I think there is something to be done, even if it's a phone call. I just think the opportunity to just release, to go ‘that wasn't a dream. I'm feeling withdrawal symptoms now’.

"And this might seem trivial. I hope now, eight years after we did it, in this world of 2024 that it's not such a barmy idea.

"That you might receive some kind of counsel. Just talk through essentially what you paused your life in June, July, or certainly how you how you perceived it.

"You've been to another planet and then you've just been dumped back on Earth. By the way, one of the most sparkliest, beautiful sequinned rockets known to man."