Broadcaster Stacey Dooley has said her skirt fell down while she was performing on the Strictly Come Dancing Live tour at the O2, leaving her standing in the middle of the venue wearing borrowed stage underwear.
Dooley, 39, was recounting her most embarrassing moment in an interview with the Guardian, where she also disclosed that she stole items as a youngster and that becoming a mother has made her more anxious.
“So I am stood in the middle of the O2 in my knickers,” Dooley said, adding that the garments were not her own but, in her words, “big borrowed stage briefs”.
Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, Dooley left school at 15 and took a job as a shop assistant. She was chosen in 2007 to appear in the BBC reality series Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts, which led to the programme Stacey Dooley Investigates and to a career fronting investigative documentaries.
In 2018, a face-to-face encounter with an Islamic State soldier earned her the One World Media award, and she was also awarded the MBE for services to broadcasting. She has since produced three new investigative films for the BBC and presents the corporation’s series Clickbait Clinic.
Dooley met dancer Kevin Clifton when they were paired together on Strictly Come Dancing. They have a daughter and live in Merseyside.
The best kiss of her life, Dooley said, was with Clifton, and she pinpointed their first kiss, in 2019.
Asked about her own shortcomings, Dooley described herself as greedy, explaining that whenever she achieves something she immediately looks for the next goal. She said she most deplores a lack of manners in other people, and named persistence among her own unappealing habits, saying she cannot accept a refusal.
She described herself as lucky, funnier than people assume and unorganised, and said her dream superpower would be overhearing what others say once she has left the room.
Dooley said she has become markedly more anxious since becoming a parent and that dwelling on worst-case scenarios is unpleasant. She also admitted regretting occasions when she appears on television without having washed her hair the night before.
Her closest brush with the law came in childhood, she said, when she frequently shoplifted items such as blue eyeliner and ice poles, and later associated with what she called questionable characters.
As a child, Dooley wanted to run a hotel, work in a market and operate a dry cleaners. Asked whom she would be if not herself, she named the Irish boxer Katie Taylor, saying she is obsessed with her.
Dooley said she changes her opinion of political leaders frequently, regarding it as a healthy habit, and identified the phrase “that’s showbiz” as one she overuses. She said the most important lesson she has learned is to take important matters seriously without taking herself too seriously.
Love, she said, is unconditional, unwavering and non-negotiable, describing it as the only thing that really matters.
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