Award-winning Countryfile presenter Matt Baker, who has been on our screens consistently for over 30 years, has named one BBC co-star who found his antics ‘annoying’.
Matt Baker
You need to make a lot of friends to sustain a long career in the cutthroat world of TV, and Countryfile‘s Matt Baker surely must have done exactly that to keep him going through three passports as a globetrotting Blue Peter presenter, and managing the egos of innumerable “incredible” celebrities as an interviewer on The One Show.
But the 48-year-old from County Durham ruefully admits he’s “annoyed” one BBC legend during his long and varied career too.
In 2010, he signed up for the BBC’s long-running celebrity dance competition Strictly Come Dancing, eventually finishing as runner-up alongside professional dance partner Aliona Vilani.
Matt says he enjoyed his run on Strictly, despite the “intense” nature of the series, as it harked back to his time competing in high-performance sport. The star had been a promising gymnast at school, but was forced to give it up after being diagnosed with anaemia when he was just 14.
The acrobatic dance routines Matt devised with Aliona allowed him to show off some of his skills, he says, “much to the annoyance of the late, great Len Goodman”, who was the head judge on Strictly from 2004 to 2016, and preferred traditional ballroom technique over showmanship.
Len Goodman did not care for Matt’s gymnastics(Image: BBC)
“He used to call my backflips, flip flops!” Matt told Wiltshire Farm Foods, adding that his Strictly stint was very hard work: “I can’t tell you how intense it is. And as the competition progresses, you’ve got more and more dances to do. We really went for it – we wanted to technically do well as well as have a good time, and we did!”
Matt, who trained as an actor at Queen Margaret University School of Drama, did have a slight advantage over some of the other celebs on Strictly. During his college years he played the part of ‘Butch Vendor, the LA Bartender’ in a 1970s-themed comedy disco-dancing revival show called “Disco Inferno.”
Matt even met his wife Nicola through Disco Inferno, first bumping in to her while he was performing at a venue in Cleethorpes called Pier 39.
To his undying embarrassment, pictures have resurfaced showing Matt dressed in a flamboyant cowboy costume including a 10-gallon hat and a furry waistcoat.
Appearing on James Martin’s Saturday Morning show, Matt admitted: “I was called Butch Vendor and I was a bartender. I used to do all this juggling and stuff. Backflips and somersaults and what have you.”
Matt and Nicola met through his 70s-themed dance troupe(Image: Ian Gavan, Getty Images)
His career has not all been Len’s hated “flip flops” though. Matt was also a guest on A Song For Europe contest to decide on the UK entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, and he’s also popped up on the likes of City Hospital and Animal Rescue Live, as well as playing a significant role in the coverage of the 2012 London Olympics.
The Countryfile job isn’t just a case of being hired as a presenter either. Matt has a deep connection with farming, though his parents. He describes how he worked to make over their farmhouse, which was televised as ‘Our Farm in the Dales’: “My mum had broken her leg and needed a knee replacement,” he explains.
“So we all moved in with my mum and dad on the farm, and we adapted it to make it more manageable for them going forward. We did a few little jaunts away and Channel 4 absolutely loved them.
