Brendan Cole says his Strictly Come Dancing run likely ended after he was overheard using the C-word about Shirley Ballas on three separate occasions. He said programme bosses wanted an assurance that he would not repeat the insult, and he refused to give it.
Brendan Cole and Shirley Ballas
On the Manopause podcast, Cole said: "I don't condone the C-word. And at the time, I apologised for using it but I wasn't going to backtrack on it and say, 'Well, it wasn't true,' because I thought it was true,". That puts a sharper edge on a departure that began in 2004, when he joined Strictly Come Dancing from its inaugural series and stayed until 2017.
His account is not just about a single outburst. Cole said he repeated the insult about Shirley Ballas three times, and that some people would argue those comments cost him the gig. For readers tracking how talent exits actually happen on long-running TV shows, that is the key operational point: one remark can be survivable, but a repeated pattern gives a producer much less room to keep the relationship in place.
and Strictly Come Dancing
Cole also said he now loves Shirley Ballas and thinks she is a great judge. At the time, though, he said he did not think she was particularly nice to the dancers and that he vocalised that view. That contradiction matters because it shows the split between later professional respect and the mood he says surrounded his exit.
He added that he had a tendency to be hot-headed during his years on the programme, and recalled slamming a door in a producer's face after becoming frustrated over pressure for his celebrity partner to take to the dance floor. He said the three or four years after he left were the finest of his professional career, which turns the story from a grievance into a clean break: he was gone, he moved on, and he says the work improved.
James Jordan
James Jordan, who appeared on Strictly Come Dancing from 2006 to 2013 alongside Ola Jordan, said his willingness to speak his mind ultimately sealed his fate on the programme. Cole and Jordan both said their gratitude for the show remains intact despite the circumstances of their departures, and that shared view leaves this as a story about how bluntness can shorten a run even when the relationship with the format survives.
