Kaplinsky hits back at BBC over dance show

Natasha 'I'm no autocutie' Kaplinsky, the former BBC anchorwoman about to relaunch herself as a record-breaking £1m-a-year newsreader for Channel Five, has fired a parting shot at her former employers. In an interview with Glamour magazine, Kaplinsky tells how reluctant she was to appear on the corporation's 2004 Strictly Come Dancing show. She accuses the BBC producers she worked with - she was presenting Breakfast at the time - of Stasi-like methods of persuasion.

"I was desperate not to do Strictly but I'd just joined the BBC and I was the nearest and weakest victim,” she said. "I said no and then got taken into a dark corner and told, 'I'm sure not doing it won't penalise your career,' which was said in such a way that meant that if I didn’t do it, I was history."

Kaplinsky, 35, has spoken before of coming close to panic attacks before the Saturday night performances, but her new revelations go further: "I desperately tried to break my ankle in the week prior to filming because the thought of humiliation was too much."

Despite her protestations, Kaplinsky and professional her dance partner Brendan Cole went on to win the series. The show was notable for the sexual chemistry between the pair - so evident that Cole's engagement to another dancer, Camilla Dallerup, was called off - but Kaplinsky still insists that there was no affair. "There was chemistry, of course, and I certainly fell in love with dancing, but I did not fall in love with Brendan."

One of the fans of the show turned out to be the veteran MP Tony Benn, whom Kaplinsky had interviewed the previous year for Heaven and Earth. Benn wrote in his diary for June 19, 2004: "I watched Strictly Come Dancing and Natasha came top again. Oh, she was so good, I voted (several times) in support of her. Then I rang and said how fabulous she was.”

A month later he wrote: "Natasha rang and said she'd love to have lunch. I said: 'I've kept a month open for you,' and she said: 'Only a month?' which was very cheeky."

Benn will be intrigued to hear that the one thing Natasha hates more than being called an 'autocutie' is being labelled a man-eater. "I might be a lot of things,” she tells Glamour, "but I'm certainly not a man-eater. I was with one man for 12 years and I've only been with a couple of people besides him."