This is an interesting twist on the idea of introducing a handsome young man to your parents. Strictly contestant Ellie Leach has been bringing her dance partner back to her mum and dad’s for dinner. And it’s going down a storm.
‘He’s become part of the family. They love him and he loves my mum’s gravy,’ she reveals. Pardon? ‘My mum cooked a beef stew — just an ordinary beef stew, nothing special I thought, but he loved it, so every time he comes for tea, he asks ‘will there be gravy?’ ‘
‘He’, of course, is Vito Coppola, 31, the Strictly pro sweeping Ellie off her feet and the man helping her to, as she tells me poignantly, ‘find my own personality’.
His Mediterranean heritage may make him an unlikely fan of traditional British fare but then they are one of Strictly’s more fascinating pairings. The former Coronation Street actress is just 22, a self-confessed ‘homebody’ from Manchester, who still lives with her parents and, although she’s been acting since she was nine, comes across as shy.
He is the Italian stallion, an 11-time Latin American champion who is something of a heart-throb. He and his pop star partner on the Italian version of Strictly became an item in real life, although the relationship was over by the time he moved to the UK.
Strictly contestant Ellie Leach has been bringing her dance partner back to her mum and dad’s for dinner. And it’s going down a storm
Vito Coppola, 31, is the Strictly pro sweeping Ellie off her feet and the man helping her to, as she tells me poignantly, ‘find my own personality’
Vito is an everything-out-there kind of man. His fans have joked that his chest hair should have its own social media account. His worship of Ellie is as flamboyantly displayed as his flamenco swagger. He calls her ‘my baby’, ‘my Lulu’, and ‘a diamond’.
At the end of their off-the-scale sexy Argentine tango last week, when viewers thought they were going to fall on each other (and not in a ‘whoops!’ way), he explained how he got this sweet lass to unleash her inner tiger.
‘There is a ball of fire between us and I said: ‘Look at me and eat me with your eyes,’ ‘ he told startled co-host Claudia Winkleman, who may never recover.
Viewers loved it. And guess what? Ellie seems to love it, too.
‘Vito is wild,’ she tells me, laughing. ‘But that’s what makes every single day such fun. I’d never done anything like this before, but he’s such a great teacher and great human that he gives me the confidence. Vito has encouraged me to come out of my comfort zone.’
She tries to explain how he gets her in the other zone. ‘We do deep breaths before we go out so that I forget about the judges and the audience, and it’s just Vito and me on the dance floor.’
Ellie and Vito were a couple to watch right from the start, but the sizzle factor between them wasn’t necessarily the thing that viewers initially found captivating — it was the humour. While Vito speaks four languages (Italian, English, Russian and Spanish) his command of English has led to some moments where the pair have collapsed laughing because of miscommunication.
There was the time he brought a ‘lula hoop’ to help with her hip action. Funnier still was the moment when she, draped over his shoulders in ungainly fashion, told him that she thought she was going to fall. He misunderstood her Manchester accent, thought she said ‘fart’ and put her down very quickly. She is still laughing about that one today.
‘I don’t think I’ve had so much fun. Every day we just laugh.’
Now they are the bookies’ favourites to lift the glitterball trophy, which perhaps shows how winning, and multi-layered, their chemistry is.
There really is only one question fans of the show want answered, of course. Are they a couple in real life? There have been rumours and — dammit — Ellie is in no rush to confirm them today.
‘There is always speculation about the couples on Strictly,’ she says coyly. ‘But honestly we are just so busy dancing.’
No you are not! You’ve just said he comes round for tea! What do your parents make of him? ‘They absolutely love him coming round and so do I.’ I rather like the idea that he whisks her off to the salsa bars of Manchester every night — but he isn’t doing that either.
But no one could begrudge Ellie some glamour after the year she’s had: losing her job and splitting from her long-term partner. She doesn’t come from a showbiz family — her parents both have ‘normal’ jobs — but she went to drama lessons when she was a child because she was painfully shy. ‘My mum thought it would give me confidence and I just loved it.’
At the end of their off-the-scale sexy Argentine tango last week, viewers thought they were going to fall on each other
Ellie and Vito were a couple to watch right from the start, but the sizzle factor between them wasn’t necessarily the thing that viewers initially found captivating — it was the humour
After a few adverts, in 2009, when she was eight, she won her first film role, in A Boy Called Dad. The following year she auditioned for Corrie. She would go on to play Faye Windass for 12 years.
Everything happened to Faye and none of it glamorous and sparkly. She had a heroin addict mother, was adopted, fell pregnant at 12, ended up in jail for attacking the wrong person and had an early menopause.
Ellie threw her heart into the role and wowed audiences with her portrayal of some harrowing storylines, but the dream job came to an end earlier this year when her character was written out.
Today, nice girl that she is, she speaks very warmly of her time on the soap, which is famously protective of its young stars. ‘It really is like a family,’ she says. ‘You get a tutor on set and you really are looked after.’ It’s still an odd environment to grow up in, surely? ‘It’s like a bubble,’ she agrees. ‘I kind of grew up around adults. You are aware you are a professional, as much as you are a kid, so you do grow up a bit faster.’
She admits that losing that role was terrifying ‘because it is scary leaving somewhere you have been for a long time’, but now ‘I do think things happen for a reason’.
Ditto with her private life. For the last five years of her time on the soap she had a steady boyfriend, Reagan Pettman, a dancer, but they split up around the same time as she exited Corrie.
She has said previously that he had cheated on her. She doesn’t want to go into details today, but it’s clear it was a turbulent time.
Ellie has dropped a few dress sizes since being on Strictly but the bigger difference is internal
And then — drum roll, please — came Strictly. And Vito. Let’s just say it could not have happened at a better time.
‘I was so ready for all of it — the sequins, the ruffles, the tassels. I was like: ‘I’ll take it all.’ It was nerve-racking though because for the first time I wasn’t acting a character, this was about me, about finding my own personality.’ The emphasis is often put on how the bodies of Strictly contestants change.
Ellie has dropped a few dress sizes but the bigger difference is internal. ‘It’s crazy how everything has changed. I don’t like the word ‘journey’ that people use when they are talking about Strictly, but there isn’t a better one because it’s true. Mine has been a rollercoaster and I’m surprised at how it has affected my whole life. I even stand differently.
‘I’ll be waiting for a coffee or something and realise I’m holding myself more ‘up’. But I’m also becoming more resilient. I think more in terms of, ‘OK, I can do this’ and not, ‘I can’t do this’.
‘When I see that my parents are proud of me and Vito is proud of me it makes me proud of myself. I believe in myself a little bit more.’
But is she hungry to win? ‘It’s funny because at the very start I said to Vito, ‘I’m not really a competitive person’ and he said, ‘You need to be competitive — with yourself.’ And so I am now. I just want to be the best I can be.’
She’s running off to training now, hurling herself into Vito’s arms. The evidence is that she loves herself a little more than she did 11 weeks ago, which is already a win.