Strictly Come Dancing: Motsi Mabuse reveals judges do not get on as friends

Strictly Come Dancing star Motsi Mabuse has admitted that she and the other judges are not friends off screen.

The 41-year-old South African professional dancer is on the judging panel on the BBC show with Craig Revel Horwood, Anton Du Beke and Shirley Ballas and revealed there is no socialising outside work.

She told The Telegraph magazine: "None of that. There are some moments where you write 'Happy birthday' or something like that.

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"In Germany, we’ve had the same judges for 10 years and there’s a basis of friendship. In the UK, it’s different."

Mabuse, who has been a judge on the German version of the show since 2011, said her relationship with the UK judges was strictly "professional".

She added: "There’s so much pressure – it’s prime time, so you get in, you do the job and everybody just wants to go home."

But Mabuse admitted she will miss Bruno Tonioli, who has now been replaced by Du Beke as a fulltime judge, as he is on the panel of the US show Dancing With The Stars.

Mabuse said: "I’m going to miss Bruno because he was an extrovert and I’m an extrovert, so I feel like we were balanced. I was not the only one around that can freak out. Now I’m just like, 'Hello? Hellooo?' "

The dancer - who runs a dance school in Germany with her husband Evgenij Voznyuk - previously admitted she still gets excited realising she is the star of a TV show.

She said: "My inner child had so much trauma growing up in South Africa. And I never thought I was beautiful. No one ever told me I was beautiful – actually, it was the opposite.

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"I look through the eyes of that child and think, 'Wow, is that me? Is this happening to me?' I’ve never lost that. I think to myself, 'Little girl, can you see how things have turned out?'"

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