Simon Webbe - Femke Colborne

Simon Webbe nearly got voted out of
Strictly Come Dancing a number of times
until something clicked late on and he
emerged a people’s favourite. He tells
Femke Colborne about growing up in
Manchester, being a member of Blue –
and why he’s happy to support the Big
Issue in the North’s Big Sell.
Photos and cover: Rebecca Lupton
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“As you can tell, I’m quite guarded.”
Simon Webbe gives a knowing laugh.
I’ve been trying to ask him about
the troubles he’s faced over the
past couple of years: how it felt to
declare himself bankrupt in October
2013; how he reportedly spent
weeks hiding inside his Essex home,
drinking a bottle of brandy a day
and contemplating suicide.
“I’ve already stressed that I don’t
want to talk about that,” he says. “It’s
out there. You know the story, right?
It’s out there and it’s not something
I really like going over and over
again.”
Webbe, best known as a member
of the four-piece British boy band
Blue, is not a man of many words.
In fact, it’s hard to believe the shy,
mumbling, tracksuited young man
slumped on the sofa opposite me is
the same one that made audiences
swoon during the latest series of
Strictly Come Dancing with his
suave, super-confident ballroom
performances. But Webbe admits
that Strictly brought out a side to his
personality that very rarely sees the
light of day. “I let my guard down a
bit,” is how he puts it.
Thankfully, he warms up a bit
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Webbe
master
when the subject turns to his success
on Strictly (he finished the show as
runner-up to TV presenter Caroline
Flack). Saturday night TV audiences
are used to hearing the cliché of
the contestant who has come on a
“journey” but, in Webbe’s case, that
holds true. The 36-year-old, born
in Manchester, had hit rock bottom
before he was asked to appear on the
show. In an interview with the Daily
Mirror in November, he revealed:
“I hated who I was and started
questioning my whole life. I was
really depressed. I never attempted
suicide but I thought about it. I
“Dance makes
you happy
– it releases
endorphins,
gives you
confidence
and makes
you stronger.”
turned mirrors round so I didn’t have
to look at myself. I didn’t want to
be here, didn’t want to be a part of
anything.”
Indeed, in the first few episodes
of Strictly, Webbe appeared to lack
confidence and his performances
with partner Kristina Rihanoff came
across as stiff and forced. The singer
found himself in the bottom two in
week three, with head judge Len
Goodman describing his performance
as “frustrating”.
“I wasn’t getting the vote and that
hurt a little bit,” he says. “It was hard
to see that people couldn’t relate to
me. But then I realised it was the fact
that I wasn’t having fun and people
couldn’t see me enjoying myself, so
they must have thought, he doesn’t
want to be there. My shyness is
sometimes taken as arrogance.”
It was around week eight that
something seemed to click. Webbe’s
Argentine Tango in Blackpool’s
Tower Ballroom scored three tens
from the judges and, for the first
time, the singer left the floor with a
beaming smile on his face. “When
you start believing ‘I can do this’,
then things start changing for you. I
was used to being in Blue and being
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protected by the group, so going
out there and being an individual
on Strictly was pretty hard. But it’s
about adapting to your environment
and that’s what I did.”
Webbe lost four stone as a result
of appearing in the series and says it
has changed his life. “Dance makes
you happy – it releases endorphins,
it gives you confidence, it makes
you stronger. I’m in the best shape
of my life and I suppose when you
treat your body like a temple you
do notice the difference. I’ve got to
say, the routines Kristina gave me
weren’t easy to master – especially
in the little time we had. But I’m not
afraid of hard work and it just made
me even more determined. I’m just
glad I was given the opportunity to
continue and the public didn’t vote
me out.”
In fact, they nearly did vote him
out – several times – but that only
made him want to try even harder.
Webbe says he’s always been a
determined character, partly a result
of his experiences growing up.
Raised mainly in Birmingham by his
mum, he spent weekends and school
holidays with his grandparents in
Manchester’s Moss Side, known
for gun violence during the 1980s
and 1990s. “I grew up building tree
houses and playing football in the
park, but a lot of my friends grew
up differently from the way I did. If
you weren’t playing football in Moss
Side, you were doing something else
you shouldn’t be. That’s just the way
it went. I knew people who were in
gangs. Some of those people aren’t
here any more – they’re dead. That’s
not the way I wanted to end up.”
Webbe joined Blue in 2001 when
his then flatmate Lee Ryan put him
forward to be the fourth member of a
band he’d formed with two friends.
Blue have since sold more than 10
million records worldwide, including
three UK number one singles: All
Rise, One Love and Guilty. They split
in 2005 to focus on solo projects but
reformed in 2011 to represent the
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