Miquita Oliver says she almost appeared on Strictly Come Dancing but BBC ‘went with someone else’

Miquita Oliver has revealed that she was in talks to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, but the producers ultimately chose another celebrity.

The TV presenter, 40, best known for hosting Channel 4’s Pop World and T4 in the Noughties, has shared that she was eyed by the BBC to appear on its flagship entertainment show, but she doubted her dancing abilities.

Speaking on her podcast Miss Me?, which she co-hosts with her childhood friend Lily Allen, Oliver said: “I was going to do Strictly one year. They got in touch and I had a meeting. And I was saying to my family, ‘It’s just not me.’ Everyone was like, ‘It’s dancing, you love dancing,’ and was like ‘Yeah, but it’s performative acting dancing… so not for me.’”

“It would have been cool to learn all those dances, but I don’t think I would have been very good at them.”

She said that the producers ultimately “went with someone else”, which she agreed was “the right decision”.

Oliver praised Celebrity Big Brother presenter AJ Odudu, who competed in Strictly alongside professional dancer Kai Waddrington in 2021, for her “unbelievably excellent” performance on the programme – but didn’t think she could ever match up to that standard of dancing.

“I think unless you’re gonna mack it like AJ Odudu did in her year, when she was just so incredibly excellent, I’d say step away from the Strictly offers unless you can AJ it,” said Oliver. “And I didn’t think I could.”

The presenter explained that while considering the Strictly proposal, she would practice her moves in her living room to Beyoncé’s 2011 song “End of Time”.

“I was rehearsing in my sitting room for if I was gonna do this Strictly thing, I would find a song… and I’d throw myself back and forth around my sitting room,” she laughed, adding that she was “embarrassed” by the admission.

“Thank God they didn’t want me to do it,” she added.

However, when quizzed on what her song and dance style of choice would be if she did appear on the show, Oliver said it would “definitely” be a track by Beyoncé and that she’d opt to do a cha cha.

Oliver recently reflected on being hit with a £170,000 tax bill in her twenties after not paying her taxes for three years. In 2012, she was forced to sell off personal possessions and declare herself bankrupt to repay it.

Speaking about the experience on Miss Me?, Oliver looked back on news reports from that period, which she said were “upsetting and traumatising” to reflect on.

“I went bankrupt when I was 27,” she said. “I knew nothing about tax, absolutely nothing. I come from parents who know nothing about tax. They didn’t think to ask me whether I was paying tax on the money that I was earning, and I was earning a lot of money. I didn’t ask. But I did have a really good accountant, it’s not his fault.”

“He’d be like, ‘You’ve got a VAT bill coming in of this amount. Have you saved it? Remember I told you to. You’ve got to pay that.’ And I’d be like, ‘OK,’ and then after a while I just stopped doing that.

She added: “I was so young. I had too much access to my money.”