Strictly Come Dancing star Debbie McGee has spoken about her terrifying experience of fleeing the Iranian Revolution in 1978, an ordeal she says made her stronger in later life.
The 67-year-old, known for the phrase "the lovely Debbie McGee" coined by her late husband Paul Daniels, was 18 when she moved to Iran to dance with its National Ballet on a one-year contract. She enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle and earned five times the amount of her contemporaries back home, but only months later protests against the Pahlavi royal dynasty swept the country.
Trapped as the Shah Was Toppled
"It was absolutely scary, and not just that there was the revolution; it was the fact you were trapped there," Debbie recalls. "And then when I did finally manage to get on the last flight out of Tehran, I got stopped at the airport, so I thought I wouldn't get out. The airport was closing, and tanks were surrounding the city."
She and several other dancers were held captive after being "herded into a block of flats" before a friend working at the foreign embassy secured three plane tickets to Zurich for her and two friends.
Narrow Escape from Tehran
At the airport a guard stopped the trio after believing their passports had been tampered with. After Debbie burst into tears, they were allowed through and told to "run" for their flight. After landing in Zurich, she was finally able to call her parents for the first time in a month.
"I went through a lot for a 19-year-old, which I'm sure made me stronger in later life," she says today. "I knew that I could get out of any situation." Debbie admits in her memoir that she feared she might never see her family again.
Meeting Paul Daniels and Strictly Success
On her return to Britain, she secured a summer season in Great Yarmouth where she met and fell in love with Paul. The pair became household names through the hugely successful The Paul Daniels Magic Show, which ran on the BBC for 15 years until 1994. They married in 1988 and remained together until Paul's death aged 77 in 2016, weeks after being diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour.
Debbie says: "Paul and I had a fairy tale life. Through the good times and the bad, we had faced every challenge together. We really were a team. I hope he knew that I was with him, loving him until the very end."
She admits she only started working with Paul initially as she needed a job. "I worked with Paul for so long that people think I got the role because I was his girlfriend, but the first show I did with him, I signed the contract and I didn't even know who he was," she says. "It was when I came back from Iran, and I just needed a job, and I didn't like magic."
Despite working alongside him for many years, Debbie continued to pursue other opportunities, including dancing with one of the world's biggest pop groups. "For a long time, Paul and I worked together, but I did other jobs," she says. "I was a backing dancer for ABBA in Europe and then I'd come back and do a summer show with Paul, and then I'd go off and do other jobs where I worked with a lot of lovely people. People don't realise I was doing that at the same time as working with him."
One of her later projects, just over a year after Paul's death, was a stint on Strictly Come Dancing 2017. With her ballet background, she made it all the way to the final, finishing as runner-up with professional dancer Giovanni Pernice. She insists she feels no jealousy watching the latest celebrities take to the dance floor, saying: "When I did it people would say to me, you're going to be so jealous watching it next year and seeing someone dancing with your partner. No, I'm not. I just have the most fantastic memories of doing it, but I also know how hard it was, and I'm quite happy to sit at home and watch it on the telly with a glass of wine or something. I don't think I could go on and do any better [if I did it again], so what would be the point? I did it, I had my time."
A Magical Life by Debbie McGee (Mirror Books, £22) is out now.
