Rachel Riley has declared she would rather face great white sharks than return to the Strictly Come Dancing ballroom. The Countdown star, who competed on the BBC show in 2013 and later married her professional partner Pasha Kovalev, made the confession while promoting her new ITV reality series Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters.
Appearing on Friday's Lorraine, Riley told stand-in host Christine Lampard: 'This is kind of real, it's blue sky, blue sea, nature. You know what you're getting there. Strictly is just a whole level of other stuff. I'll take great whites over Strictly, for sure.'
The 39-year-old mother of two admitted she initially hid her involvement in the shark programme from her children, Maven and Noa, fearing they would have nightmares. However, when she video-called them from the Bahamas, they were more impressed than scared. 'It made me realise that we don't have an in-built fear of sharks,' she said.
Riley described the experience as 'the trip of a lifetime' and praised the show for educating viewers about shark conservation. 'It's not your typical reality TV where there's gratuitous tasks, it's not about winning. It's about learning about sharks,' she explained, adding that 100 million sharks are killed each year and that the creatures are not interested in humans as prey.
