Strictly winner Kara Tointon shares sad secret behind Glitterball trophy

Kara Tointon, the winner of Strictly Come Dancing series 8, has claimed that the show's Glitterball trophy is made of cardboard.

The former EastEnders star won the dance competition show in 2010 and spoke on the Celebrity Catch Up: Life After That Thing I Did podcast about the state of her famous prize 12 years later.

"It's now bald. It's a bloomin' bald, grey cardboard ball," she said. "I feel like saying to the BBC, ‘I need some maintenance on this please! If you can get round here and shimmy it on together again’.

"It should come with a lifetime guarantee," she added.

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Speaking further on her time on the show, Kara said: "I still cannot believe that I won the show. It's my victory in life and I take it with both hands.

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"You're doing something that is completely out of your comfort zone in every sense, but a really one-off life experience that I look back at so fondly."

Meanwhile, last month Kara opened up on why she would never return to EastEnders again as Dawn Swann.

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"Every year I get asked about it," she told The Sun. "It's the thing I’m most known for, that I was most watched in, but I really enjoy doing lots of other things so I can't see it, no."

Kara added: "You can't catch up because things are moving so fast. It's so lovely what they achieve, the serial dramas. To do the amount of work they do, in a short period of time and just keep going is quite a feat.

"It's an amazing production line, but I think they could take it back to two times a week. [...] You wonder how things are going and how long those serial dramas will sustain."

For one week only, Strictly Come Dancing airs on Sunday (December 11) at 7.15pm on BBC One, with a results show on Monday (December 12). Spin-off show Strictly: It Takes Two airs on weeknights on BBC Two. Both shows also stream on BBC iPlayer.

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Sam Warner

Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies, TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International. Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind, and is equally in his element crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' as a sub-editor.