Debbie McGee thinks there’s "magic happening" between her and Giovanni Pernice.
The 59-year-old television assistant has hit the headlines week-in week-out because of her undeniable chemistry with her ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ professional partner on screen but, although they’ve both played down romance rumours, she has admitted they share a "deep connection" that she can’t describe and he makes her happy.
Speaking to OK! magazine, she said: "There is a magic that is happening. The other dancers take the mickey out of us.
"He really cares, he doesn’t just care about me, he cares about everybody. He makes everyone feel special and that’s what Paul [Daniels, her late husband] used to do, and that’s what I love about him. We’ve laughed about how similar we are. Why does it happen in life? I don’t know. We just have this incredible bond."
And, although she and Giovanni have a 32-year age gap between them, Debbie doesn’t think about being older than the Italian hunk because she and Paul had 20 years between them and he was one of the most "supple" people she had ever met.
She explained: "I don’t. I was married to a man 20 years older than me, who had more energy and was more supple that anybody I’d ever met. And my dad, Pat, who died three years ago, was still running faster than me at 84. He and my mum Babs, who is now 80, they weren’t people who let life pass them by. My mum still goes dancing every Saturday with my Uncle Toby. She loves to jive."
And Debbie credits Giovanni for bringing out a side to her that no one else has been able to do before and she knew instantly that he was the dance partner for her.
She said: "Giovanni has brought out a lot of me that somebody else wouldn’t have. He’s a very clever young man and we both totally respect each other."