Strictly Come Dancing star, Annabel Croft, has praised the BBC dance show after reaching the semi-finals of the star-studded series in 2023 with Johannes Radebe
Annabel Croft admits she was ‘saved’ by Strictly Come Dancing after signing up to the show within a few weeks of tragically losing her husband. The tennis star, 58, was bereft when her husband and the father of her three children, Mel Coleman, died in 2023 aged 60, just eight weeks after being diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer.
Insisting she didn’t want to be a “professional widow”, Annabel said yes to Strictly and wowed the audience and judges alike, reaching the semi-finals with her professional partner, Johannes Radebe. Praising the show for ‘stopping her from sinking’ while she navigated her grief, she said: “Literally within a few weeks [of losing him] I was on the phone to my agent. I don’t know what I would have done without being busy. I would have sunk.”
READ MORE: Annabel Croft looks happier than ever with male pal two years after husband’s tragic death
She continues in The Telegraph: “There is so much to be positive about. I don’t want to be a professional widow. I understand that a lot of people can identify with what I’ve been through, but I don’t want grief to define me.”
Annabel recently revealed that her husband had heartbreakingly kept his symptoms from her before he saw a doctor. Speaking on the Mid.Point podcast, she said: “We were making the bed one day and he just turned to me and he said ‘I haven’t told you this Annabel, but I’ve got these funny pains in my side and they’re just not going away, they’re getting worse’.”
The mum-of-three continued: “It never dawned on me that it could be something so absolutely catastrophic.” After the results of Mel’s scans came back, Annabel said the doctors were “absolutely horrified because they knew that he wouldn’t have much time left”
She explained: “Outside before we went in, Mel had said to me in the car park ‘I’m really worried about this meeting’, and I said ‘Oh, don’t worry about it – of course it’s going to be fine. You know, maybe you just have a cyst that’s going to have to be removed’.
“But the very first thing out of the surgeon’s mouth was ‘I’m afraid your life expectancy’s not very good.”
After being dealt the devastating diagnosis, Annabel said Mel’s cancer had spread to the liver and kidneys and possibly the brain before he eventually died from sepsis.
She shared: “People don’t realise this. He had stage four cancer. It started with colon cancer, but it could have been across everywhere at the same time. But it spread into the liver, it was spread into the kidneys, even possibly into the brain as well. But what he actually died of was sepsis and there was a perforation from one of the tumours.
“We’d gone on this flight to Portugal thinking he was going to get some sunshine and some respite from all of his treatment. I think maybe on that flight it may have just swollen something and perforated one of the tumours.”
During the first Strictly pairing show two years ago, Annabel opened up about her husband’s unexpected death and heartbreakingly admitted that Mel would have loved to have seen her on the dance floor.
She said that it was always his “dream” for her to be on the show, saying she “wished more than anything” that Mel could see her performing.
* If you have been affected by this story, advice and support can be found at Macmillan Cancer Support.
