Kirsty: How Strictly helped me get over heartbreak of divorce
Kirsty Gallacher is desperate to stay in the competition, which has kept her sane after a tough year, she tells India Sturgis
Presenter Kirsty Gallacher has disclosed how Strictly Come Dancing has enabled her to move on after her divorce, this year, from rugby player Paul Sampson
‘Ifeel like I’ve been pulled through a bush backwards,” says Kirsty Gallacher, the
Strictly Come Dancing
contestant, exhaling deeply and clutching a large cup of coffee.
It certainly doesn’t look the case for the 39-year-old mother-of-two and daughter of Bernard Gallacher, one of Britain’s best-known golfers. Not one hair is out of place, her make-up is immaculate and she is wearing the sort of outfit that most women would sell vital organs for – a black Alexander Wang top, knee-high suede boots and a Burberry jacket.
It’s barely lunchtime and Gallacher has already fitted in a school run, a three-hour training session with Brendan Cole, her
partner and coach, and is primed for her regular presenting slot on Sky Sports. Dishevelled and disorganised, she certainly isn’t.
But looks are deceiving, and Gallacher has had more than a year of emotional turmoil. In August last year, she separated from her rugby player husband Paul Sampson, 38, after 14 years together and five of marriage. The pair, who have two children – Oscar, eight, and Jude, five – divorced in February.
“It has been a very difficult year, but then I am no different to any other woman or man who goes through divorce. It is just not a pleasant thing to go through. On my mind the whole time were my children – but you have to do the right thing in life, and if something isn’t right, for whatever reason, you have to make changes.”
Changes have been made, and Gallacher is now “much better” and hoping to spend this year focusing on herself: “People go through far worse, I really mean that. We are very lucky that we are still in working order after the divorce.” She and Paul now divide their time with the boys, alternating weekends with them.
Strictly Come Dancing has been something of a lifeline, a welcome distraction from home affairs. She was offered a position on the show last year, but turned it down as “it would have been far too stressful”: “No way mentally, emotionally, physically would I have been able to do this a year ago.”
Now she’s desperate not to leave. “I want to stay in,” she says, with all the determination of someone who has spent a lifetime involved in competitive sports. “It is a really important learning process for me, for getting back my confidence after a difficult year. It sounds deep, but it is true. You have to really go somewhere that you never thought you’d go to get out there and dance on that dance floor.”
For tonight’s show, she’ll have best friends Zara Phillips and Sky Sports F1 presenter Natalie Pinkham in the audience, whooping her on. Gallacher – who describes her dance style as “like a racehorse coming out of the stalls” – hopes to avoid the dreaded dance-off, in which she appeared last Sunday night, before being saved by the judges.
In the past, Gallacher has been criticised for being a bit of an ice queen, but today she is anything but. She is effusive in her politeness and has a stock of neat, self-effacing lines, as well as an undercurrent of steely determination.
“I think because I’m doing a job that is quite straight – you know, I am a sports presenter behind a desk – that people don’t really know me. In
you are probably seeing more of the real me. I am just a girly-girl, I am mischievous. I like to have fun.”
Does having fun extend to new relationships? She pauses to pick her words.
“I have dated this year,” she begins. “I’m not dating now – I’m very single. I don’t know when I would fit it in, but I am very open to meeting someone. That is actually really exciting, the whole dating process. It is a nice thing. It makes me feel warm. I’m looking forward to that.”
If you look like an off-duty Bond girl, as Gallacher does, it probably is something to look forward to – for the rest of us, approaching 40 while relaunching oneself on to the dating scene might feel as warming as Dante’s inferno.
Originally, Gallacher wanted to be a designer or fashion journalist, and went to the London College of Fashion, but a meeting with a Sky boss at a sporting event for her father turned her head. She took a job as a researcher for the channel instead, and began her climb up the ladder.
“[Sky] said, we’d like to nurture you. I just kind of got caught up, and I think that’s life. I love sport, it’s my passion, but it’s a shame, too, you wonder what might have happened.”
In 1998, she was promoted to a presenting job and had to fight off charges of nepotism – her father has won 11 European Tour Titles, is a threetime Ryder Cup captain and, age 20, became the youngest man to represent Britain in the tournament.
“It was something I had to deal with, and there were a few comments,” says Gallacher, briskly. “But [charges of ] nepotism fade when they see you can do your job. I knew I just had to work extra hard, which is my personality anyway. As long as there are no stones uncovered, you have nothing to fear and they don’t have a leg to stand on.”
It must be hard to be taken seriously as an attractive woman working in presenting sports, traditionally a very male-dominated arena, I suggest.
“I don’t think about it now. There were some traditionalists when I began who thought, ‘Hang on a minute, what does she know?’ Well, I can know just as much, if not more, about sport than men.”
She has certainly proved those traditionalists wrong after 17 years on the small screen covering events such as the Ryder Cup, the Olympics and Wimbledon.
Gallacher says she has never felt sexism at Sky, and with presenters such as Gabby Logan, Clare Balding, BBC Sport’s Hazel Irvine, Radio 5 Live’s Kelly Cates leading the charge, she is pleased that the face of sports commentary is changing. Still, people enjoy throwing mud, and earlier this year she was lambasted after interviewing American pro-golfer Jordan Spieth on the side of a golf course in three-inch stilettos – sacrilege when it might cause divots on a championship green. Gallacher looks exasperated. The incident was, she says, blown wildly out of proportion: she wasn’t on the hallowed course at St Andrews (as had been reported), but a rough piece of land near the practice ground at a hotel.
“I obviously felt quite angry about that because, of all people, I’ve got etiquette. You do have to be thick-skinned. You are going to get silly comments and criticism and negativity.”
She’s also been doing battle in the gym to keep herself in shape, with rigorous personal fitness training sessions, resistance work, weight training and cardio.
“I love fitness. I chucked myself into it a year ago, when I was getting divorced. I had to put my energy into something really positive. I just thought: Right, you are going to have to get your head and body together.”
Both of which now seem in fine fettle.
“Just throw yourself in and get on with it, Kirsty,” she says, as much to me as to herself.
Strictly Come Dancing: The Results is on BBC One tonight at 7.15pm
‘In Strictly, you probably see the real me. I am just a girly-girl. I like to have fun’