Laura Whitmore EXCLUSIVE: ‘My Housemate Bet A TENNER I’d Win Strictly

By Lynsey Carratt

TV host Laura Whitmore took some time out from her Strictly Come Dancing rehearsals earlier this week to join celebrities and their four-legged friends on the red carpet at the Animal Hero Awards, at London’s swanky Grosvenor Hotel.

The Irish presenter admitted the intense training schedule for the BBC dance show was leaving her ‘exhausted’.

Lucky Laura has been paired with professional dancer Giovanni Pernice, who hit the headlines earlier this week after splitting with his girlfriend actress Georgia May Foote, who he danced with on the show last year.

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Laura, 31, has quickly emerged as one of the early favourites to walk away with the giltterball trophy, despite the public not having seen her dance yet.

Laura said: ‘I haven’t really been looking at that side of things, I am just trying to get on it with it. Although, my housemate put a tenner on me to win.’

Speaking of her fellow competitors, Laura said: ‘I haven’t really seen any of them dance yet, we did a group dance for the launch show, but I was too busy concentrating on my own steps to watch anyone else. What I do know is, everyone has got rhythm and can move, even Ed Balls.

‘There’s no one who can’t dance.’

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And it didn’t take long for Laura to gush about her hunky Italian dance partner, describing him as ‘lovely’.

She said: ‘I like to call him Gio Gio [Joe Joe]. He is so talented, and when I saw him last year I thought he was one of the best dancers and best choreographers in the whole show.’

But Giovanni isn’t giving Laura an easy ride when it comes to training for the show.

Laura said: ‘We’ve got two and half weeks left of intensive training and he’s really cracking the whip! ‘I’m like “can we have coffee break?”’

‘And he’s like “no, not until you know the routine!”

‘I’m finding it really hard!’

It’s this level of fab we’ll be expecting, Laura…