EXCLUSIVE: Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba revealed the reason he has now spoken out on his porn addiction after years of being afraid to do so
Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba has revealed that he feared speaking publicly about his secret struggles with pornography would damage the career and public image he had spent a decade creating.
The TV presenter and West End star, who won Strictly with Joanne Clifton in 2016, admits there was a ‘natural reticence’ from agents, PR companies and employers when he made the decision to talk openly about his 30-year pornography addiction.
Ore, 40, is determined to help others and has decided to speak out after years of keeping his addiction private. He hopes his story can shine a light on the damage he believes explicit content can do to young people.
But he admits he was worried about what might happen if he spoke his truth.
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Speaking to performance development coach and author Annalie Howling on her Happy After podcast which goes live on Wednesday (October 7), Ore said: “I’m sure, you know, ten years post Strictly Come Dancing, there is a kind of unwittingly a PR machine that has kind of created a reality of who I am publicly and naturally.
“You know, I’ve been really fortunate to have lots of wins and lots of different areas, and I’m really proud of where my career has gone.
“And so, yeah, the idea of something potentially knocking that all back is quite worrying for a lot of people. But I thought, for me, no one I know, and having already lost so much in my life – my dad, my sister, my marriage – and going, I’ve already been prepared to push buttons in my life in order to save it.
“I thought if I can explain the message and the why to the people who are investing in me, care about me, and love me, I would hope that they would join in the fight. And if they don’t, they’re not the kind of people.”
Ore admits he has been surprised by the supportive reaction from from the industry. But he says there were genuine concerns about what his revelations could mean for his work.
He went on: “I remember I was going into pantomime that last Christmas and speaking with the pantomime team. And, you know, this was a huge thing because I was talking about families here, and I would have spoken about pornography a month before.
“And, you know, what does that mean for ticket sales? What does that mean for being on the poster? What does that mean for the theatre in the building?
“And I said, the thing is that we’re talking about the very children that are walking into this building are the same children that earlier that day might well have been sharing clips, sharing explicit scenes, understanding the world in a really violent or really horrific way, that are walking into what’s pantomime.”
Ore says he had real fear that others might follow his path. It led to him being determined to speak publicly, no matter what the outcome.
He continued: “I mean, for me, it was a case of seeing myself in the shoes of my children and going, I kind of using my responsibility as their parenting. I know too much now. The very idea that I could just let you walk into the world without sharing what I know, helping you identify the pitfalls and navigate around them, would be irresponsible of me.
“This really isn’t just pornography in the kind of state that we imagined it from decades ago, whether it is magazines on the top shelf or DVDs or even in the early kind of download era. This is everywhere.
“It’s hypersexual social media. It is content creation. It’s ways that are being shared around texts and social media. And because of the shame that this entire industry has built on, no one is going to put their head above the parapet.
“And because this has damaged my life, I was like, I have to. Because if in five years’ time my kid or my friend’s kid falls in the same track and I didn’t say something, I couldn’t forgive myself.”
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