It was the first series of Strictly Come Dancing which saw award winning dance partners and couple Camilla and Brendan sign up to the show.
Camilla was paired up with antiques expert David Dickinson, whilst Brendan, her love of eight years, took on newscaster Natasha Kaplinsky.
In what has now become too frequent a tale when it comes to Strictly, Brendan and Natasha fell for one another on the dance floor, cheating Camilla out of a fiancé.
Just before they were about to go on stage on May 15, 2004, Camilla witnessed Brendan pull Natasha behind a curtain, ‘to give her a good luck kiss,’ something which she describes ‘plunged a dagger through my heart.’
In a desperate attempt to get her relationship back on track, Camilla told Brendan to invite Natasha over for dinner so they could form a friendship.
He dismissed this as not ‘appropriate.’
Heartbroken and alone, Camilla’s life was in tatters.
‘It was like a mini death. You go through an arc of grief, anger, bitterness. My best friend and dancing professionally with Brendan had both gone.’
‘When I was pushed against the wall, broken, with nowhere else to go, I remember thinking, "Hang on a minute, theree’s something I need to learn from all this because, if I don’t, it’s going to happen again",’ Camilla explains.
‘It took me some time to realise this, of course, because I was hurting so badly’ she adds.
What’s worse is that, in the second series of Strictly, where Camilla returned to dance again with a new celeb partner, Natasha Kaplinsky also returned to present the show - meaning the two women had to come face to face.
‘That was difficult. I was still very raw. But I took the view that, if I could survive that, I could survive anything.’
Camilla is now happily married to Hollyoaks actor Kevin Sacre, who played Jake Dean.
