TV presenter Fleur East has revealed she didn’t tell anyone at Strictly Come Dancing she was pregnant with her first child, admitting she was “very naughty”.
The 37-year-old returned to host Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two last year but decided to hide the fact she was pregnant as she didn’t want anybody to treat her differently.
Speaking on Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby Podcast, the former X Factor star said that she received a stern message from the show executives after revealing her news.
She said: “I didn’t tell anyone at Strictly which probably wasn’t the best thing. My management knew and my family knew but nobody at Strictly knew.
“After it came out, I remember speaking to the exec Alex and she said to me ‘Fleur, that was very naughty of you, we could have looked after you if you told us. So, in future, I don’t know if there’s going to be another baby but please let us know because we like to look after you’.”
The singer revealed in March that she and her husband Marcel Badiane-Robin welcomed their daughter on March 22. The host posted two photos and a video to Instagram which showed her holding Nova in a baby carrier.
In 2023, Fleur who also co-hosts The Hits Radio Breakfast Show, replaced Rylan Clark as host of the show’s spin-off series, It Takes Two, which she presented alongside co-host, Janette Manrara.
Strictly Come Dancing host Fleur East on It Takes Two
(Image: BBC)
Fleur told the podcast that she found out she was pregnant just before she landed the job before explaining how she managed to hide it from the bosses.
She said: “Very big suits. A lot of people started to clock on though, a few people were messaging me going ‘your suits are getting really big, you must be pregnant’.
“Family members were texting my sister, bless her, ‘Is Fleur pregnant?’ and she didn’t want to lie.
“I just felt very vulnerable and I think because I knew I was going to be on TV for three months while I was pregnant, and my first pregnancy, I didn’t really like the idea of having all the attention on me while I was pregnant.”
East has been married to stylist and designer Badiane-Robin since June 2019 and the couple tied the knot at a ceremony against the backdrop of the Atlas mountains in Morocco.
Among the guests in attendance were 2018 I’m A Celebrity winner Harry Redknapp and his wife, Sandra, TV presenter AJ Odudu and The Only Way Is Essex’s Vas J Morgan.