Charlotte Hawkins has taken action to ensure her Strictly Come Dancing partner Brendan Cole doesn’t wind up the judges again.
The 42-year-old’s experience on the dance floor has been somewhat overshadowed recently by Brendan’s spats with the panel – and she wants that to change!
Speaking to her Good Morning Britain co-hosts on Friday morning, the journalist said she’s issued Brendan with a warning he’s NOT to mouth off again.
Go Charlotte!
Talking about a picture she’d posted to Twitter overnight showing Brendan with tape across his mouth, she said: “This is me trying to teach Brendan to be quiet.
“He said that he’s not going to take on the judges this weekend. We’ll see how that goes, though. He’s finding it quite hard.
“I’m literally gagging him.”
Charlotte went on to say that although she knows Brendan has just been defending her from the judges’ criticism, she’s worried his comments may affect her scores.
“He’s got my back, he was defending me from that point of view, so I’m touched by that, but there is a chance that it is affecting it rather than my dancing,” she said.
“I don’t know… maybe it is my dancing, actually!”
But the big question is: can Brendan really stay mum?!
He’s famously clashed with judge Shirley Ballas twice; first after she accused him of making the routines too difficult, prompting a furious response.
The dancer raged: “I think she should keep those opinions to herself. I put in two difficult steps that we could do in training but when something goes wrong at the start [it’s hard to recover].
“If Shirley wants to swap places with me, I’m quite happy to judge – I know how to do that.”
Then he butted heads with Shirley again over the amount of “rise and fall” in his tango with Charlotte.
Brendan then took aim at fellow judge Bruno Tonioli for a comment he made about Davood Ghadami and his pro partner Nadiya Bychkova.
He’d lavished praise on their quickstep by saying it was like a “race to the bedroom” – but angry Brendan said it was inappropriate given the pair are both in relationships.
Ranting in his Best magazine column, he said: “If it was said about two single people, like Mollie and AJ, then maybe it would have been okay, but both Davood and Nadiya have partners and children.
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“Strictly’s also a family show – imagine your kid asking you what ‘race to the bedroom’ means.”
Who will be next on Brendan’s hit list?