Being a star of Strictly Come Dancing has many benefits including having a mass of adoring fans – not to mention all the beautiful costumes they get to wear. However, like with everyone who is in the public eye, the pro dancers also have to deal with the occasional negative comments. And when Kevin Clifton joined the show, his co-stars were quick to warn him about certain online forums to avoid as they were full of unkind posts about Strictly. Speaking on his podcast, The Kevin Clifton Show, he revealed: "There were a lot of forums when I first came onto Strictly and had a profile, some of the dancers warned me about forums which were full of nastiness. They said you must not look at this forum or that forum as they are full of nastiness. But of course we are humans and so I looked."
Kevin Clifton has revealed that there is a negative side of being on the show when looking online
Kevin continued: "There were so many negative comments about me, presuming they know me, saying why I am rubbish and about my appearance and about the celebrity I was dancing with." The star added: "It was so horrible and I realised why they told me not to read it. It really affected me and I was so sad and it really let me down."
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The star has been partnered with Anneka Rice for this year's show
The star revealed that most recently, he experienced online abuse after posting an inspirational clip of himself from the recent Strictly Come Dancing: The Professionals show. In the clip, Kevin revealed that he had been turned down twice by the show before finally being given a chance to appear on it. The star said that while a lot of comments had been positive, he had also received many unkind ones. "You either let it in and it hurts you for a bit, or you ignore it." He admitted that he had even replied to one of the comments, asking the user if they were okay." Kevin is known for responding to positive comments from his fans too and is very active on Twitter, much to his followers' delight. He often wishes people a happy birthday and thanks them for their support on a regular basis.
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Currently, Kevin is keeping busy in rehearsals as he is training with his new celebrity dance partner, Anneka Rice, ahead of Saturday's Strictly Come Dancing show. Following reports that the reigning Strictly Come Dancing champion was upset after being paired up with Anneka, 60, Kevin shut down the rumours by saying that he was "very happy" and "very impressed" by his partner. Indeed, the pair seem to be getting along like a house on fire during rehearsals, and Anneka opened up to fans about Kevin's fun teaching techniques during training. In a clip, he asked his partner: "So what have we learned today?" to which she replied: "Well there's the egg. There's the picking up a piece of old tissue that somehow got caught on your shoulder. Fat panda. That's weird, but anyway we know what we're talking about. We don’t need to explain everything to everyone. We don't want to give all our secrets away."
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