As his charming turn on Strictly demonstrated, there’s more to Pete Wicks than reality TV bad boy. He talks about his reputation and his difficult childhood — and explains why he prefers dogs to people

Pete Wicks, 36, on Strictly with partner Jowita Przystal in November and, right, photographed with Doris and Ginny from the Dog’s Trust
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Pete Wicks enters the east London studio where the Times photoshoot is taking place straight from seeing his accountant, but still looking like the Essex-born love child of Keith Richards and Johnny Depp: leather jacket, tinted glasses, bouncy shoulder-length hair, tidy beard and drooping ’tache.

Every centimetre of skin below the neck is tattooed. LOST is inked across his right knuckles; the left ones read SOUL. “It’s what my nan used to call me.”

Hidden beneath his white jumper on his forearm, another reads “Never enough” in Latin (“At least I think that’s what it says. I wouldn’t know. I can’t read Latin”), which he had done at 15. “Those words meant something to me, because I had never felt like I was enough.”

Pete Wicks and Honey from the Dog’s Trust. “If you don’t understand yourself, it’s very difficult for anyone else to understand you”
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Just four months ago, the nation was divided into people who’d never heard of Wicks and a smaller, albeit devoted group who’d been fans of the 36-year-old ever since his seven-year stint in reality show The Only Way Is Essex and/or his popular podcast Staying Relevant, which he hosts with another reality alumnus, Sam Thompson of Made in Chelsea and I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here!.

But then in September he was cast in Strictly Come Dancing and a whole new demographic was introduced to the moody bachelor, who tearfully wafted through his couple’s choice dance in honour of his late nan, Doreen. Wicks wasn’t much of a dancer, but clearly people liked what they saw. Week after week he was voted through.

In the end, he and his professional partner, Jowita Przystal, reached the semi-final, much to the disgust of some superfans who sent Wicks death threats for beating more talented movers — say, former Olympian Montell Douglas — claiming it was unfair someone stayed in the show simply for being “popular”.

“Some of the messages I got were beautiful, but the horrendous things were heartbreaking,” Wicks says in his trademark growl. “I’ve learnt you shouldn’t take too much interest in the good stuff or listen to the bad stuff, but normally I’m in control of the narrative. This was me at my most vulnerable I’ve been on television, so the negative stuff was harder to take.”

A sardonic type, Wicks had never watched Strictly, let alone harboured a desire to appear on it. “That jazz-handsy, cheesy stuff is so far out of my comfort zone. I’m cynical, with a dry sense of humour. But everyone else wanted me to do it — my friends, my management — and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I absolutely still can’t dance. I’ve never even danced at a wedding or in a bar. I’ve two left feet and no rhythm whatsoever. I can’t even clap to a beat. But I do like learning, and being taught by someone who’s a world-class expert in what they do was absolutely priceless.”

Strictly graduates (excepting the rare likes of Amanda Abbington, who claims the show left her with PTSD) love to rhapsodise about how the show changed their lives. “Nah. It didn’t change me. I’m the same person now I was when I went into it. But it allowed people to see this other side of me.”

This other, softer, less laddish side was undoubtedly what his management were keen for the world to understand. And Wicks is undeniably a more complex creature than the one reflected through the reality lens. Sitting beside me on a pink velvet sofa, his arms are wrapped round his knees, which — when things become too personal — he frequently brings up to his chin. There’s a wariness in his bright blue eyes that reminds me of the mistreated, misunderstood mutts he tries to bond with in his upcoming series Pete Wicks: For Dogs’ Sake.

He’s quietly spoken and — despite never having therapy — given to thoughtful if convoluted rambles about mental health. He’s certainly nothing like the “arrogant lothario” he says people expect him to be in his book, also called Never Enough. “People think being in the public eye I love to be the centre of attention, and I am very confident, but I’m also quite introverted. It’s odd. Over the years I’ve become a caricature of myself and people assume that’s what I am.” A geezer? “Yeah.”

Wicks and Przystal performing a samba to George of the Jungle. “Over the years I’ve become a caricature of myself and people just assume I’m a geezer”
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What most Strictly viewers were oblivious to as they enjoyed Wicks cha-cha-cha-ing in pink PVC trousers to I’m Too Sexy was that a decade ago he’d been reality-TV public enemy No 1 after he was revealed to be sexting an ex behind the back of his Towie girlfriend, Megan McKenna. One person spat at him; another hung a burning effigy from a tree; some threatened to kick him and his dogs to death. “I got painted with a brush that’s very hard to shake off.”

But now Wicks is on a path to redemption. True to his management’s hopes, Strictly gained him a new fanbase. “A lot of people have messaged me saying they had an opinion of me beforehand, and then they actually appreciated what they saw in the show, which is lovely.”

‘I prefer dogs to people’

If there are remaining doubters, they’ll be silenced by Wicks’s next move, Pete Wicks: For Dogs’ Sake, in which he volunteers at Dogs Trust rehoming centres. He pitched the four-parter to UKTV via his own production company and then wrote the scripts. Who could spit at Wicks — who lives alone with his two French rescue bulldogs, Eric and Peggy – after this footage of adorable hounds rescued from puppy farms and canine surgery, and heartwarming scenes of him winning round mistrustful, abused strays?

“At a party, when there’s an animal there, I’ll be the one sitting in the corner with the dog. I talk to my dogs as if they understand what I’m saying — I believe they do. I’ve never met a bad dog. I prefer dogs to people. I feel more comfortable and safe and myself around animals.”

Wicks is big on such misanthropy. I read him a sentence from his book, which he reiterates in several different places: “Life is shit and full of shit people.” “I stand by that sentence. I’ve always been pessimistic, a glass half-empty person. It’s self-preservation and it’s pre-emptive. If you expect nothing then you’re not disappointed, and if amazing things happen it doubles the joy. But looking for the light in a dark place can be tough. It’s quite a lonely place inside your own head.”

The foxtrot, to Beyond the Sea. “I absolutely still can’t dance. I’ve two left feet and no rhythm. But I like learning”
BBC/PA

He’s been an insomniac since childhood: “I get maybe four hours a night.” He doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him: “Absolutely not.” Yet reading his book, it was impossible not to pity him. He had a “pretty and wholesome and nice” Essex childhood, even though he was already a natural cynic. Did he go to Disney World? It’s the only time Wicks laughs. “Yeah. Even there I was like, ‘Do you really want to be Mickey Mouse? No, you’re getting paid for it.’ ”

When he was 11, his parents split up. At first he saw his father, whom he idolised, intermittently, but then he moved to Qatar and remarried and communication broke down. “Me and my dad’s a complicated thing,” he says now. “I think he’s a great man. We just don’t have a relationship.”

The story becomes even more poignant when he describes walking in on his mother after she’d slashed her wrists. He was 12. He called an ambulance and she came through. “But at that low point, I wasn’t enough for her not to want to do that, and maybe if I’d have been better or been enough at the time, then she wouldn’t have felt the need to even consider that,” he said on Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes’s High Performance podcast.

It wasn’t until the death of the aforementioned grandmother three years ago that he began reassessing how all this might have affected him. “I’ve always just plodded forward, but after I lost my nan I questioned whether I was actually moving forward or whether I was stagnating because of baggage. I never used to accept what happened to me as trauma. I don’t blame my mum for anything any more, but it’s when you start looking back on things and you think, OK, that probably affected the way I’ve lived my life.”

For years, his lack of self-knowledge, he says, manifested itself in anger. “Anger releases that tension in your body when you don’t know how to deal with something. I’d find things to be angry about, because it was safer to be angry than not know how to label the way I was feeling.”

You don’t have to be Freud to see this might make someone a commitment-phobe. Wicks won’t say where he lives, but it’s alone. He’d like a family, but writes that settling down “is the bit I just can’t do. The minute a relationship gets to the point where I seem to be having an impact on someone’s life, it scares the shit out of me.”

Of course, such statements — combined with the pet-loving, motorbike-riding, loves-his-nan narrative — are catnip to certain women. Do girlfriends think they can fix him? “Yeah. Over the years, people have tried to understand me, but if you don’t understand yourself, it’s very difficult for anyone else to understand you.”

With his Towie girlfriend, Megan McKenna, in 2017
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Wicks has been “linked” to endless women — recently his Strictly professional partner, Przystal. “Absolutely nothing was going on. The headlines were adamant, even after we told everyone we were just friends. But Jowita was a really amazing, beautiful person. One thing I’ve taken away from Strictly is a friend for life in her, but the way the press banged on about us tainted some of the experience.”

OK, so what about Maura Higgins, formerly of Love Island? In the jungle competing in I’m a Celeb while Wicks was on Strictly, she let slip they were a couple. Wicks’s answer when I ask if they are sounds like an outtake from Just a Minute, where you have to waffle as long as possible on a particular subject. An extract: “We’ve known each other for a very, very long time. We’re very close. But a lot of being in the public eye is that people assume that you have to tell everyone all about your private life and I’ve never, never done that.” In other words, yes.

Wicks left school at 16 and was working in medical recruitment, earning good money, when a friend persuaded him to do a cameo in Towie. He became a regular on the show and the subsequent opportunities brought him more cash and plenty of fabulous experiences, but he feels it was all unearned. “People think [reality stars] are just blagging life. Television was never meant to be my job. I fell into it, and now I have to make the best of it. Everything I’ve done has been by being me. I’m not an actor. I don’t have any talents whatsoever. Am I making a difference? Probably not. I’m just there to entertain as much as I can.”

Wicks with Albie. “Do girlfriends think they can fix him? ‘Yeah’”
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In his book, he says, he’s still searching “for the big overarching goal for my life”. Now he tells me, “I am, but at least I’ve done things I’m proud of.”

Fame has given him a platform. He took part in a Humane Society “rescue mission” aimed at 170 dogs languishing on a dog-meat farm in South Korea, and helped expose practices at a fur farm in Finland. He was a vocal advocate of Lucy’s Law, passed in 2019, which banned third-party sales of puppies and kittens. In For Dogs’ Sake, he seems so happy donning PPE to sit in on canine operations, it makes me think he should jack in the reality malarkey for a job with an animal charity.

“I’d love that. But it’s very difficult to drop everything you’ve done for 11 years and just go and work with animals. We’ve all done things we regret or made mistakes, but if you can do the odd good thing that makes a difference, whether it be to one person or one animal, it’s a life well lived.”

Listen to the full conversation with Pete on the podcast and hear his story in his own words: