Smash hit

By then, she was a star, and that was because of Strictly Come Dancing, the ratings it achieved, and the notoriety it generated in the papers that insisted, despite her denials, that she and Brendan Cole had been more than dance partners. It changed everything. Kaplinsky now straddled news and light entertainment. She was on the red carpet at the Baftas, on Children in Need, on BBC One on New Year’s Eve.

She is adamant, however, that far from seeing Strictly as a career move, she was bullied into taking part. After six months refusing, she was summoned by Lorraine Heggessey, the BBC One Controller, to a Monday morning meeting. She still said no. “And then Jane [Lush, Head of Entertainment] took me into a corridor a little while later saying – this is to quote directly – ‘I’m sure you’re not going to be penalised for not doing it’. Which essentially meant: don’t do it, honey, and you’re history. That’s how I read it anyway. So I did say I’d do it but under huge resistance, and then tried to break my ankle, arm and leg, anything before it started. I thought a small injury would be fine: I don’t mind being in plaster for a bit if it means that I didn’t have to walk down those stairs. And then I did it and through the series suddenly I forgot about the trauma of being on it and then just started to enjoy the dancing.”

And it led to a tabloid frenzy? “I had paparazzi outside my house going through my bins, going to my ex-Brownie leaders, going to my parents’ house, literally following me on motorbikes, camped out in a pub that was opposite the house for three months to the point that I actually moved house. I just couldn’t bear it.”

The press smelt sex? “I don’t think it was that. I think they smelt something of a newsreader who’d kind of taken off the jacket and it was erotic, I suppose.”

The tabloids dug and unearthed things. She had been involved with a Meridian executive while she was still with her likeable university boyfriend, Mike Barnard. Her line on all this is that the papers partner her with all kinds of people she has barely met. I ask her to concede, at least, that there was a period of romantic “complication”.

“Well, do you know what? If you look at anybody’s life hasn’t everybody had times where they’ve had their heart broken or they’ve ended a relationship that was deeply saddening? My relationship with Mike: 12 years, you know, and I love him still. He’s a massive part of my life. I grew up with him. But you look at anybody’s history. I’ve had relatively few relationships in my life and I’ve behaved OK. As long as I’m happy with that I’m OK.”

The muddle was swiftly and surprisingly ended by Justin Bower, whom she met and married in five months. “I knew that I was going to marry him and he has been absolutely fantastic and everything I could hope for in a husband. There are some days I hate his guts and I hope I never see him again, but it doesn’t last for very long – that’s a healthy marriage I think. We have quite a fiery relationship, but it’s exciting.”

Does she still hope to have children? “What do you mean still?” She is 35. I meant, I say, having signed this three-year deal with Five. “God yes, absolutely and of course that was part of what we discussed. I hope I will but you never know, do you?”

Significantly perhaps, Justin originally had no idea who she was. His parents were better informed. “I think his mother reads the Daily Mail quite a bit so she probably thought, ‘Oh my God, who is this?’ You know, the Daily Mail construct, but they’ve been fantastic. Actually when we got together I said to Justin, ‘For whatever reason, there is an unhealthy interest in my love life and you are going to get some of this and I’m sorry’. He was so cool about it.”

They refused to sell pictures of their wedding and did one press call instead. They bothered to find a remote island in the South Pacific for their honeymoon and were discovered anyway; her “bum” was all over the Mail andMirror: “Pictures of our bed, how much we’d spent on the first night, the whole thing.”

The “Daily Mail construct” contained other elements. She was not just an ambitious newscaster but a news diva. She berated production staff while conducting interviews on the Bafta red carpet. At Sky she feuded with its top woman presenter, Kay Burley (handbags at dawn, I was told, by a senior Sky man). She says that she hardly knows her and they now pass in the corridor without exchanging “bad words”. As for Bafta night, all she remembers was freezing. Many of the stories, she believes, have their origin in her stormy relationship with former agent, Jon Roseman, who parted acrimonisouly with her as a client and has called her the most difficult person with whom he ever worked.

“I think I once lost my temper on Breakfast, not lost my temper, but I had some harsh words to say because things did not go well and people had not done their jobs properly, which made me and Dermot very vulnerable. It was the briefest period.”

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