Craig Revel Horwood recounts being stabbed and strip-searched on holiday

[Dominique Farrell]

Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood has said he was stabbed and strip-searched during a holiday many years ago.

The 61-year-old dancer said he also had jewellery stolen during the stabbing in Madrid, before he was searched for drugs on his way back to Paris, where he was working.

 

Speaking on the Judgemental podcast, which he hosts with fellow Strictly judge Anton Du Beke, he said:

 

"I went on holiday in Madrid and got stabbed, that was nice, and it was stinking hot.

"My jewellery was stolen as well. They ripped my necklace off my neck and gave me a big burn mark...

"It was a razor blade... I was slashed... [in the] stomach coming home from a club. It was probably two o'clock in the morning, but that's sort of normal - you go out for dinner at 10 or 11.

"But I remember I was dancing at the Lido in Paris, and we went to Madrid for a holiday, so that ended up pretty bad.

"And then when I got back, I got strip-searched. I hadn't shaved, so I did look a bit of a wreck. I'd been stabbed, I had burn marks all around my neck from where I was, like, attacked.

"And then the French strip-searched me down to literally nothing... they were looking for drugs."

 

He went on to say that disaster also struck during a trip to Mombasa in Kenya, where he found out that his hotel had burned down when he arrived at the airport.

 

"I remember flying to Mombasa in Kenya. It was all fabulous, I thought, 'Oh yeah, I'm going on safari, that's going to be nice'.

" Got out there, arrived, all the hotels and everything were paid for in advance. They're giving us a... like, a bus from the airport to the hotel, and they said on arrival, 'Your hotel has burnt down'.

"The hotel was burnt down, and no one bothered to tell us until we actually arrived.

"Anyway, they found us another one. They just shoved us in there, [and] I went on, you know, a very romantic cruise down the River Nile...

"Then the next day we all had to go to the airport and leave the crews, and one by one, when we're standing in the queue at the airport, people just were falling to the ground, literally dropping, like, boom."

"The sickness was later revealed to be salmonella poisoning from "off chicken" that those on the trip had eaten the night before.

 

The new series of Strictly Come Dancing will air on BBC One this September.

 

RTÉ Entertainment.