Wynne Evans rips into BBC as singer aims to clear name after Strictly saga left him ‘suicidal’ in scandal-hit year
Wynne Evans, 53, has spoken out for the very first time on national television about the numerous newspaper articles about his time on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing.
The opera singer, who was partnered with Katya Jones on the dance show, has endured a tumultuous past year since being unveiled as a participant following a series of incidents that hit headlines.
Evans, whose contract with the BBC for his Radio Wales show wasn’t renewed just last month, first found his Strictly journey tarnished following an “inside joke” with dance partner Jones in which he moved his hand across her waist.
What followed was intense scrutiny on the pair’s subsequent apology video and fury from fans who branded the incident “inappropriate”.
Evans found himself in hot water even after he’d been eliminated from the 2024 series, accused of making a sexual comment towards the show’s live tour host, Janette Manrara, and sending indecent gifts to fellow participant, Jamie Borthwick.
The singer joined Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley on Wednesday’s This Morning to finally set the record straight on all of the incidents that have plagued his life since he first stepped out on the Strictly dance floor.
“Loads of people do Strictly and it’s a fabulous event and they get on really well with it. For me, it wasn’t that kind of experience,” he began to the ITV hosts before he explained he “hadn’t expected the press intensity and focus like it was”.
“For me, to have papps outside the house, to have people following you, to have people hanging on your every word, private conversations, public conversations, all fair game for newspapers to put their own narrative on, it was extraordinary.”
Deeley then brought up the Manrara comment in which a news outlet alleged Evans had directed a sexually inappropriate comment towards her.
Evans explained: “We were just there with the photographers, the reporters had left, but we were there having some stills taken. I was there talking to Jamie Borthwick, I had this nickname for him, which was ‘Old…’ and then the word in question, and ‘Boy’, so I used to call him this because he could contort his legs behind his head.
“I didn’t know there was a reporter still there recording apparently on their phone from quite a distance and then put their own spin on it, their own narrative, taking out the words, ‘Old’, and ‘Boy’, which you can see on the video, it’s absolutely crystal clear.
“She’s just said that, even though I’m looking at Jamie, they claimed that I’m directing this word at Janette, and it’s totally been taken out of context. Absolutely, the narrative is so wrong on it.”
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Upon seeing the report that followed, Evans said he was “shocked and horrified” since there was no sexual innuendo intended.
“I was just like, how can somebody take a narrative and change it and everybody just believe it,” he continued before he reeled off the personal challenges he was already facing at the time: “I’d just lost my brother, I’d broken my foot, I was lying in a hotel room in Glasgow with all these newspapers getting in touch with me.
“They ring you the night before as late as possible to try and get you to make a comment.”
Taking aim at Strictly tour bosses, Evans claimed: “The Strictly press tour rang me and said, ‘Look, you’re supposed to have said this word’… So I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry’, they took that as an apology and didn’t run it by me, they sent it to the newspaper, they printed that as my apology, and that’s the situation I was in. But then it looks like I validated the story.”
Shephard then read aloud the Strictly tour’s response in which bosses claimed Evans had “approved” the apology statement that was distributed. Evans said the response was “not true”.
The conversation then moved on to the so-called “hand incident”. Evans claimed it was Jones who told him to put his hands on her waist, and she would drag it away.
He even claimed there was footage of Jones suggesting they get to the front of the shot “to make sure everybody sees it”. Evans clarified the entire incident was a “body language experiment that was picked up on”.
Discussing the apology video he and Jones shared on social media, Evans said the BBC told him to make it 10 seconds rather than 50 seconds, a decision he says was the “wrong” one.
In another dig at the Beeb, Evans branded the press scrutiny as a “juggernaut” and claimed the BBC is “not in control” when it comes to dealing with that element of the show.
When asked if the cast were told by the BBC about the heightened press attention, he said no.
Evans went on to concede that the sex toy gift to Borthwick, another saga that dominated headlines, was “just a joke that went too far” and he “held his hands up”.
“When I’m reading a headline that says ‘Sex Pest’, or I’m having eyebrows threaded and I put ‘Ouch’ on Instagram, and the headline is ‘Wynne Evans in agony after Strictly debacle’, you’re kinda going, ‘This is totally misrepresenting me. I used to think there was no smoke without fire, but boy has my idea totally changed about that.”
Evans was diagnosed with clinical depression in 2016, and the headlines took him to the “darkest spot of my life”. “I was at my lowest ebb. I wanted to end my life and I would have if I wasn’t surrounded by people,” he told the ITV hosts through tears before Deeley turned the spotlight on the BBC
She asked Evans if he’d heard from the BBC amid such an ordeal, to which the former Strictly star said: “I haven’t heard from them since I got suspended. They’ve only spoken to my lawyers.”
When Shephard read aloud the BBC’s statement claiming they provided a “comprehensive duty of care” to Evans, he sniggered. The statement also said he’d been offered “continued support” since his contract concluded. “I wasn’t aware I had that option,” he told Shephard.
Concluding the interview with a final jab at the corporation, he said: “I just think that mental health is talked about, and sometimes I just fear it’s lip service that they’re given.
“We’ve become brilliant with equality… but mental health is still a grey area where we can say, ‘We’ve got this or that policy in place’, but actually you need to look after these people with mental health issues because in a flick of a light switch, the light can go out.”
As he bid farewell to the This Morning hosts, Evans admitted that if he could go back and do anything differently, he admitted he “wouldn’t do” the show in the first place.