Newsreader Kate Silverton has said she wants to use her Strictly Come Dancing turn as a platform to raise awareness about children’s mental health.
BBC anchor Silverton studied psychology at the University of Durham and her experiences as a mother of two children have encouraged her to train as a children’s counsellor.
Ahead of her first appearance on the TV dancing competition tonight, the journalist was asked if she was excited for viewers to see a different side of her personality.
🤣It's time to try out those dance moves. #Strictly returns tomorrow 7.35pm @BBCOne. 💃🕺🏾 pic.twitter.com/Js5uru0Y2G
— BBC Strictly✨ (@bbcstrictly) September 7, 2018
Silverton replied: “Yes. I love my job and I love what I have achieved professionally.
“I’m looking at Strictly as a little bubble on its own. I actually want to use it to talk more about children’s mental health, which is another serious topic.
“So I’m doing a lot more on mental health next year and brain science, working with a lot of psychiatrists and doing some documentaries.
“So this is like this lovely, joyful interlude.”
Silverton works with a number of children’s mental health charities including the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families and Place2Be.
Silverton, who has reported from the frontline in both Afghanistan and Iraq, added she was looking forward to working in a less serious environment.
“I watched The Greatest Showman with my daughter and at the end there’s a quote from Barnum, and I love the narrative of the film as well, there’s a quote from Barnum: ‘There is no more noble art than making others happy.’
“And I thought, ‘that is what Strictly does’. And it makes me happy when I watch it.
“So it’s just so nice to be part of it for this period, just to immerse myself and genuinely have that gleeful joy.”
– Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC One tonight at 7.35pm.