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Strictly Come Dancing Winner Ore Oduba Opens Up About Porn Addiction Struggles

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Former Strictly Come Dancing champion Ore Oduba has opened up about the first time about a porn addiction that he described as having been “destroying my life from the inside out”.

The TV personality and musical theatre star recently sat down for a wide-ranging conversation with Paul C Brunson on his interview series We Need To Talk, during which they discussed issues including racial identity, mental health, grief and the scrutiny he’s faced as a public figure.

As the interview progressed, Ore first opened up what had made him want to publicly disclose his past issues relating to porn, explaining: “There is a part of me that is terrified. I say ‘a part of me’ – the vast majority is terrified, because I feel like personally, for me, the rest of my life begins the day after this, as it’s a kind of a seminal ‘draw a line’ moment.

“I’ve got so much going on up here. I have no idea how it’s going to come out, but I know it’s going to come from a very important place. And we talked for a long time about where we should have this conversation. And in the end, it had to be you and it had to be you. What you create here is safety.”

He continued: “It’s something that I was really keen to bring to this conversation, to talk to you about, because it was only as a result of all of these awakenings that a year and a half ago, I was able to escape an addiction that had dogged me for nearly 30 years.”

Ore then shared that his addiction dates back to when he was nine years old, when he was “introduced for the first time to pornography” by a friend’s older brother.

“That’s when my addiction started,” he said. “And I think after everything that’s happened, only understanding how much of a thread that had been throughout my life was I was finally able to escape it, because I know it had been dogging me. It had been destroying my life from the inside out.

“But it was the thing that, from a very early age, was what I was running to as a response to a lot of the trauma.”

Recalling his initial reaction to discovering pornography, Ore explained: “This was 30 years ago, at a time when we didn’t have the accessibility that we do now. I was just shown some adult images on the computer, and I remember being very intrigued and a feeling of eyes being opened.

“And whilst I wouldn’t say addiction set in immediately, the intrigue started immediately. And it didn’t take long, relatively speaking, for that intrigue to start running my mind over – because at nine, at that age, you haven’t necessarily got full access. You know, this is dial-up at the time. This is the 90s. And [I wanted] to find a way to address that intrigue, wanting to find ways of [replicating] that awakening or find it, whether it was on television or in magazines.”

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Ore also said that he felt unable to discuss his issues as a child because of his strict upbringing, eventually dealing with it when the burden of hiding it felt like too much for him to bear.

Initially, Ore rose to fame as a host of the CBBC series Newsround, as well as serving as a sports correspondent on various BBC News shows.

After winning Strictly in 2016, he has broadened his presenting horizons, and has also embarked on a career in stage performing, appearing in theatrical productions like Grease, Curtains The Musical and The Rocky Horror Show.

Since last month, Ore’s name has also been repeatedly mentioned as a potential new host for Strictly, following the news that Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman are planning to step down from presenting the show at the end of the current series.

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