Former Strictly pro Kevin Clifton has spoken about anxiety shaping his journey into parenthood, and how this is an issue his partner Stacey Dooley doesn’t struggle with
Kevin Clifton has spoken candidly about his romance with Stacey Dooley, having first crossed paths on Strictly Come Dancing back in 2018. Several months after claiming the Glitterball Trophy, the couple confirmed their relationship and have since welcomed a three-year-old daughter, Minnie.
Kevin, who stepped away from his role as a professional dancer on Strictly in 2020, revealed that he and the documentary filmmaker are “very different”, yet he adores her “optimistic” approach to life.
Appearing on the Actors Safe Space podcast alongside fellow Strictly alumnus Ore Oduba, Kevin opened up about his tendency towards anxiety compared to Stacey, and his concern that he might pass this trait on to their daughter.
He said: “Me and Stacey are very different. Stace is very… she’s such an optimistic, and vibrant, and happy, and positive person, that’s not to say that I’m really depressive or something!”.
“But Stace wakes up and she’s so full of wonder and so full of, like, enjoyment of the world. She says all the time, ‘I never want to die, I just want to live forever because it’s wicked, because it’s brilliant!’ Like, when do you hear people say that?
“Stace lives in that zone, she wakes up every day and everything’s exciting and, ‘what are we going to do?’ Whereas I’m living in this world of like, ‘what’s going to hurt me a few steps down the road? What’s the danger? How can I prepare for that? How can I guard against it?’
“Whereas Stacey is a bit more, like, headfirst into life. So, I guess, I don’t want Minnie to grow up having that same thing that I do of like, ‘what danger is approaching?’ all the time.
“I just want her to have a love of life like her mum does, and so I want to try and create that for her and just let her know that everything’s safe and therefore everything’s brilliant! Go and explore, go and jump out of a plane or whatever the hell that you want to do!”.
“Because she knows that you’ll be at the bottom to catch her,” podcast host Ore suggested.
Kevin was in agreement: “If I can create that feeling of the safety that I’m trying to always do for myself in terms of my over-preparation, if I can put that work in and make the world feel fun and safe, then she can just go and enjoy it because I’ve put the preparation in for her.”
Stacey and Kevin uprooted from London to Liverpool with Minnie in 2023, a move the TV presenter has credited with making her feel “happy” and “very calm”.
Stacey told SpareRoom’s podcast Home Again: “It’s not like it was a very, sort of, sensible, thought-through plan. It was more like, ‘I want this house. Let’s do it’. And Kev’s such a good sport cos everyone’s like, ‘You’re moving from London to Liverpool?'”.
“I was like, ‘Yeah’. They were like, ‘How long have you thought about this?’ I was like, ‘(I) decided last week’. They were like, ‘And Kev’s chill with that?’ I was like, ‘You know, Kev’s pretty relaxed.’
“Like, if I say, ‘Oh we’re going to’…If I said to Kev tomorrow, ‘We’re moving to the Isle of Skye’, I think he would actually just move to the Isle of Skye.”
Stacey Dooley’s Australia: Off the Beaten Track airs on Sunday 15 November from 9pm on Channel 4.
Ensure our latest DWP headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as Preferred Source in your Google search settings
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: mirror.co.uk
