Former Strictly Come Dancing professional Oti Mabuse has recalled the “hell” she went through watching her newborn daughter being kept in a neonatal incubator after she gave birth prematurely last year. The South African dancer, also known as a Dancing On Ice judge, swapped emotional stories with writer and broadcaster Rev Richard Coles on the Tuesday edition of ITV1’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
Mabuse announced she had had her first child in an Instagram post on Christmas Day 2023, after having difficulty conceiving, and later revealed her daughter was born 10 weeks premature. She told Coles she was not allowed to hold her baby daughter and had to use her voice to connect with her.
“They find comfort in your voice,” Mabuse said. “For two months, every single day we’d sing church music.”
Coles then appeared to get emotional as he remembered baptising a “premature boy”, who was “only just alive”, and he and Mabuse shared a hug.
He added: “I just remember he was this tiny little pulse of life, and David (his late partner) got a pipette of water and we blessed it, and we baptised him and he survived, and now he’s a healthy young footballer, which is great. But I just felt so… it was such a precious thing.”
Mabuse said: “They are (precious), my daughter was really, really tiny when she was born. It’s hell. It’s hell to be in the hospital, to hear those sounds, to not see your baby’s eyes for a week, it’s hell to constantly look for advice from the doctors.”
Becoming tearful, she added that the worst thing was that “every night, you need to leave them, you need to leave your baby in someone else’s hands”. Mabuse also told Coles: “Maybe you can say a prayer over her, I would really love that.”
He said he had “already said a prayer for her” and they embraced again while she became more emotional. The celebrity vicar’s civil partner David Coles, who was also a priest, died after a long illness in 2019.
Coles told Mabuse: “I miss him. He’s just left a massive hole in my life and I’m living my life around that loss.”
The vicar was a contestant, partnered with Australian dancer Dianne Buswell, on Strictly in 2017, when Mabuse was paired with paralympic sprinter Jonnie Peacock. Elsewhere in the Australian jungle, Irish boxer Barry McGuigan appeared to get lost as he took pots and pans for washing up by the creek, and Love Island star Maura Higgins and Jane Moore took on the Bushtucker Trial.
Moore and Higgins faced tunnels filled with spiders and toads, and earned mud crabs for their dinner. I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! continues at 9pm on ITV1, STV and ITVX.