Anton Du Beke and his silly big mouth has stirred up all sorts of trouble at Strictly HQ, and it turns out that racism is a very sensitive subject for one of the other contenders in particular. Ricky Whittle has opened up in a new interview with Love It!, admitting that he was bullied quite badly as a child growing up in Northern Ireland. "I must have been one of the first black people in the whole country. I stood out from the other children at school," he remembers. "They had never seen a black kid before and that's when the bullying began. I had a hard time of it." Ricky says he eventually overcame the taunts by becoming the school football star, but admits that the bullying has made him determined to succeed in life. "I have no interest in coming second," he said. Sounds like fighting talk to us, and he's still right up there on the Strictly favourites board. We'd be worried if we were the other contestants...
heatworld asks: What's the best thing you've ever won?
Ricky was bullied at school