dani dyer

She signed up to Celebrity SAS to ‘find herself’

Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins is back for a sixth series on 4 January, with 14 famous faces leaving their lives of luxury for special forces training – expect lots of shouting, sweat and tears! heat favourite Dani Dyer, 29 – who’s mum to two-year-old twins Summer and Star with footballer husband Jarrod Bowen, plus son Santiago, four – tells us that taking part in the show helped her to find herself again…

Why did you want to do Celeb SAS?

After you have children, I feel that – especially at first – you lose yourself a little bit. It’s like, ‘Oh God, who am I?’ So, the show helped me realise my worth. It would have been lovely to have a little week in Ibiza – this wasn’t very relaxing – but I found myself again and stopped doubting myself, which I do a lot. I’m now able to trust my instincts, as I tend to worry about things before they’ve even happened. I don’t want to put that onto my kids. I want them to know that if Mummy can do this, they can too. Mums are great – we’re strong!

dani dyer on strictly

Will they be watching?

I’ll let Santi watch some of it – obviously, not all the screaming and shouting, but I think he’ll love it. He told all his mates that I was going into the army, because he saw me in my kit. I didn’t know what to tell him, but I didn’t think he was going to spread that rumour.

How did you prepare for the show?

I usually attend blaze classes, and I do body pump classes and Pilates, too, but had to add some outdoorsy stuff – and I’m so glad I did. When I arrived at my first class, there were already rumours I was doing SAS , but I obviously couldn’t tell them. Then I turned up in my new boots to break them in, and that gave the game away! But the training is so different – it involved things like running up hills and bear crawling down them, which I was grateful to have done before it came to filming the show.

You had to quit Strictly after fracturing your ankle…

I’ve been having lots of physio and it’s much better now. I speak to Nikita [Kuzmin, her pro partner] all the time – he and Amber Davies were amazing. I sent them all my love.

Could we see you on the next series?

That’s up to the bosses! We’ll see what happens.