Strictly Come Dancing: Here are things you didn’t know about host Tess Daly

A new season of Strictly Come Dancing is coming very soon and the country is excited! The show always promises to have some amazing and memorable moments and already, the announced cast is hinting at some incredible dance moves!

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While the casting announcements aren’t over just yet, we know that the hosts will remain the same. Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman have signed on for another year! The show’s high popularity means that we feel like we know those hosts as they’ve been on our screens for years. But there are many things that remain a mystery.

Let us shed some light on Tess Daly…

Tess Daly isn’t really Tess Daly

Tess Daly has been hosting Strictly Come Dancing since 2004 and since it’s been almost twenty years, we felt pretty sure that we knew who Tess Daly was.

Well, we were wrong. According to different sources, her real name isn’t Tess.

No, Tess Daly is actually Helen Elizabeth Daly.

Where did the nickname or alias Tess come from?

Well, if we believe Daly herself, she has always used the nickname Tess in her professional life. According to Daily Star, the name was given to her when she began modelling.

She explains that there was already a Helen Davies at her model agency which at the time was deemed too similar. Her agent therefore decided to name her Tess.

She explains:

So Tess it was. I was gullible and impressionable. Mind you, two weeks later I was in Japan then travelled the world. Paris, Milan, New York,

However Tess Daly explains that her mum still calls her Helen. That is also why the model turned TV host hasn’t legally changed her name. Out of respect for her parents.

Tess Daly didn’t want to be famous

According to several interviews, Tess Daly’s rise to fame was due to a lot of luck. Well of course hard work as she now has been in the industry for a very long time.

For instance, she explains that she never wanted to be a model but that, when she was a child, she wanted to be a nurse. However an incident quickly made her realise that that wouldn’t be possible.

She says:

I used to love science — biology, chemistry and physics — and wanted to be a nurse. But then my sister cut herself really badly and I almost fainted. I couldn’t even look. I realised that I can’t be a nurse if I hate blood.

Once her dream of being a nurse was over, Daly had to find something else. And that something else waited for her outside of a McDonald's. According to My London, she started her modelling career after being scouted outside of a McDonald's.

Tess Daly was successful as a model and that career took her all over the world. She joined Channel 4 is 2000 and has since then been working on shows such as Find Me a Model, Home On Their Own on ITV and of course Strictly Come Dancing on BBC.