The Strictly auditions pandemonium that preceded the BBC’s biggest hosting shake-up in years has finally been laid bare, with radio presenter Sara Cox detailing the elaborate secrecy that surrounded the screen tests for the show’s new presenting line-up.
Cox, who was among the presenters who auditioned for the role, joined newly appointed host Emma Willis on BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show to swap notes on what she called the ‘fun pandemonium’ of the process. Willis will front the forthcoming series alongside Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe, who BBC News reports joined the British version of Strictly as a pro dancer in 2018.
Cabs, cover stories and cloak-and-dagger chaos
The lengths the BBC went to in order to keep the auditions secret were, by both women’s accounts, considerable. Cox described being picked up by a cab with no idea where she was heading. ‘The car turning up to pick you up and not saying where it’s taking you, which was weird as a control freak,’ she said. Willis was quick to agree: ‘It was the most cloak-and-dagger thing I’ve ever been a part of.’
The production team even invented a fictional programme to feed to the cab company, keeping drivers in the dark about their passengers’ real destination. ‘They wouldn’t tell us where we were going. They made up a fake TV show for the cab company so that nobody would get suspicious,’ Willis explained. Cox filled in the detail: ‘So the cab company didn’t leak anything and it was something like, Britain’s Lovely Gardens. That’s the show we were all going on auditioning for.’
The studio itself, once they arrived, was a far cry from the glittering ballroom viewers see on BBC One. Willis described it as looking ‘like if Blue Peter had been in to do Strictly’. Cox added that it resembled the show’s earliest days: ‘It was literally like a wallpapering table and some judges sat there.’ Despite being ‘so nervous’, Willis said the producers put her ‘straight at ease’.
Strictly auditions pandemonium, and a new era for the show
The secrecy surrounding those screen tests speaks to how carefully the BBC has managed what amounts to a genuine changing of the guard. According to The Guardian, Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman had jointly hosted Strictly since 2014, making their tenure one of the longest and most celebrated in British light entertainment. Both received MBEs for services to broadcasting in June 2025, a fitting close to their era on the show.
Willis, Widdicombe and Radebe now face the considerable task of filling that space. The trio have been photographed during dance rehearsals, and Willis confirmed on The One Show that they have been spending ‘a lot of time together’ over the past few weeks as the launch approaches. The Strictly auditions pandemonium may have been chaotic, but from the sound of it, the chemistry between the new hosts was clear from early on.
Radebe’s path to this point has been a long one. Before joining the British series, he appeared on the South African version of Strictly in 2014, according to BBC News, before crossing over to the UK production four years later. Now, after years as one of the show’s pro dancers, he steps up to co-host duties.
Cox, meanwhile, came away from the whole experience with a good story and perhaps a little relief that she could finally talk about it. The BBC’s fake TV show gambit, the wallpapering-table studio and the mystery cab rides have all been keeping quite well.
Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer in September, with Willis, Widdicombe and Radebe set to take the floor for their first live launch show together.
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