'18 years on telly every day!' Homes Under The Hammer's Martin Roberts slams Strictly snub
MARTIN ROBERTS has hit out at Strictly Come Dancing bosses for snubbing him when he started a campaign to join the BBC show as a contestant last year.
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Homes Under The Hammer presenter Martin Roberts, 58, was left incensed after he was apparently snubbed by Strictly Come Dancing producers following his pleas to become part of the show’s celebrity line-up. The star felt baffled after the dance competition’s bosses ignored his social media campaign in a bid to join last year’s series, protesting that he should have at least been given a courtesy call due to spending “18 years on telly every day” fronting BBC show Homes Under The Hammer.
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Speaking about his frustrations in an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk, Martin said: “I’ve wanted to do Strictly for years.
“And you just sort of sit there quietly, and you just hope you get the call, and then nothing happens.
“And then you see people on there and you think, ‘surely I’m in some kind of category, 18 years on telly every day!’
“But there’s this mysterious sort of selection process, nobody really knows how it works.
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“Like casting of anything, you know, it’s all terribly secretive.”
The property expert continued: “Obviously, they’re balancing lots of things and I respect them for that, you know, they've got lots of lots of things to juggle.
“But that day, I heard from my agent that they wouldn't even take a Zoom call or a phone call, and I thought, that’s like not even getting over the first hurdle.
“So what am I doing that’s so wrong that means I don’t even get a chance to say I’d be quite good at this?
“So I was a bit hacked off,” he admitted.
The Homes Under The Hammer presenter shared his hopes to join Strictly when he posted a video on Twitter back in June, in view of his 27,000 followers, asking fans to help him out in a campaign to land him a place in the BBC dance competition.
However, his pleas fell on deaf ears, as Martin later revealed that he didn’t receive a phone call from the producers of Strictly, despite his best efforts and a lot of public support.
Martin said in the clip: “Hey, Martin here, I need your help.
“I’m just sitting outside a house filming in Coventry and you know what? I’m a bit cheesed off.”
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The star added: “It’s been a really rough few weeks and I’ve just heard that Strictly, which is something that I’d absolutely love to do, won’t even have a phone call with me to see if I might be somebody who might be suitable for Strictly.
“And it is something that I would love to do, and not even offering me the chance to have a quick conversation and point out the fact that I haven’t got many years left in me.
“My body is falling apart, the guarantee is falling apart on various bits and pieces.
“And I am running out of chances to do something that I would love to do, and my daughter would love me to do, and I think I would be really fun at.”
Asking for extra support, Martin suggested: “So could we start some kind of campaign?
“This is probably totally wrong and I shouldn’t be asking, but can we get a ground swell, can anyone be bothered to actually try and do something?
“Let’s do a hashtag #martin4strictly and see if we can just at least get me somewhere down the line to have a chance to do this, because loads of people seem to think they’d quite enjoy me on it, and I would certainly love to give it a chance.”
Express.co.uk previously contacted representatives for the BBC about Martin’s hopes to be on Strictly, but received no comment.
Martin didn’t manage to secure a slot in the Strictly line-up last year.
However, he went on to perform in Strictly the Real Full Monty 2021, during which he was one of a group of brave celebrities who stripped off on-camera to raise awareness of cancer.
