Ben Shephard not 'brave enough' to host Strictly Come Dancing
Ben Shephard has ruled himself out of the running for the Strictly Come Dancing presenting job as he feels that the new hosts should have experience on the BBC show.
Ben Shephard isn’t "brave enough" to host Strictly Come Dancing.
The This Morning host has ruled himself out as a potential replacement for Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman on the BBC Saturday night favourite as he thinks that the new presenters should have a background on the show.
Ben told Metro.co.uk: "Hosting Strictly? Goodness me! Saturday nights. I’ve never even done Strictly (as a contestant).
"I feel like anybody that hosts the show needs to have a bit of an insight into what it is like go through the mill."
He added: "I’ve never been brave enough do it. I’ve climbed the mountain (Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief in 2009). But I’m not brave enough to take on Strictly."
Shephard does have experience of taking over a major TV show though, as he and Cat Deeley replaced Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on This Morning in 2024 and were scrutinised after ratings on the ITV daytime show fell when the pair first joined.
The 51-year-old star said: "[You] sort of take it in your stride, really. We love doing the job that we get to do and understand that there is a lot of ownership of the show… because of the viewers that make it work.
"I welcome it. I enjoy doing what we’re doing and making sure we are delivering a show that the viewers want to enjoy and watch, and also that part of it is not something I massively dwell on."
Ben explained that he ignored the initial criticism by focusing on life at home with his wife Annie and their sons Sam, 21, and Jack, 19.
He said: "I just have to get home and realise I’ve got three loads of washing and my teenage sons to tidy up after.
"There are bits of it that I can concern myself with… that I can listen to and take on board, stuff I think is interesting, or valuable, and then forget about the stuff that’s not."
Ben is hosting the new ITV series The Summit - which sees 14 strangers attempting to scale a mountain in New Zealand and pocket a £200,000 prize - and revealed that he has been thinking about which of his TV colleagues he could cast in a celebrity version of the show.
He said: "I’d throw Joel Dommett in there in a minute. He would be fantastic. Cat would be bang up for it. She is really game, she’s got young boys, so she likes a bit of camping, I think.
"[Kate] Garraway would be awful. She wouldn’t even find her way out of the airport to get to the hotel at the start. She’d be absolutely hopeless but brilliant telly.
"Dermot [O’Leary] would be brilliant, and Alison [Hammond] would be cheering everybody on. She’d be dancing all the way up."
