Strictly’s Craig Revel Horwood details lonely family Christmas with microwaved dinner
Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood recently illuminated the Christmas lights in Stamford, near where he lives in King’s Cliffe, but not all of his previous festive seasons have been quite as glamorous and sparkling. In an interview with the Guardian in 2014, Australian-born Craig revealed that his early December memories in his native country involved hot weather and a Christmas dinner reheated in a microwave.
He said: “I grew up in Australia, so Christmas was hot. One year all my chocolates melted together in my Christmas stocking.” He went on to detail his family’s Christmas dinner. “In the 1970s the microwave changed dinner forever. My dad, who was in the navy, would make dinner in the morning, plate up a meal for each of us and put it under clingfilm with our name on top. He’d put the plates in a row by the microwave and at lunch he’d heat them. We’d line up and be served at three minute intervals and then file off to the table. If your dinner was the first one microwaved it was pretty lonely when you sat down to eat!”
In an interview with The Independent in 2022, he also revealed his best and worst Christmas presents of all time. “The best Christmas present I’ve ever received was my GI Joe helicopter,” he said.“The worst was a tea towel from Australia worth £1.99 and I had to pay £20 at the Post Office to get it out of customs.”
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Craig left his home in Australia for London in 1989, and now lives with his partner, horticulturist Jonathan Myring, in a seven bedroom house in King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire. The couple, who met on Tinder, have been engaged since 2020 and are set to marry next summer.
It is in the nearby town of Stamford in Lincolnshire that Craig was given the honour of turning on the Christmas lights this year. At the event in Red Lion Square on 21 November, Craig spoke to the crowd as he held the plunger that would turn on the light display, saying: “I’ve just moved here, well three years ago darling, and I absolutely adore it. I’m very excited about plunging this baby so we are out of darkness and into glamour.”
There was a slight hiccup when some of the lights remained dark, however, leading Craig to joke: “someone’s pulled our plug,” but then he pushed the plunger down farther, and confessed: “It was me - I didn’t push it down enough.”
