Krishnan Guru-Murthy reveals his heart doctor ‘couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t drop dead’ on Strictly
NEWSREADER Krishnan Guru-Murthy heads on to the Strictly dancefloor with his doctor’s warning ringing in his ears.
The Channel 4 star has genetic heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which has killed two of his cousins, and it might impede his progress on the show.
He said: “The basic advice is, I’ve got to keep my heart out of the red zone, which is the last 15 per cent of your heart rate. So, I’ve got to keep my heart rate below about 140, and I don’t know whether you can do that or not, in a 90-second very fast dance.
“My cardiologist basically said, ‘I can’t give you a hundred per cent guarantee that you won’t drop dead, but you’ll be fine.’
“The Charleston will be a challenge, but we’ll see.”
It means the BBC will have a defibrillator on standby.
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He added: "I have to listen to my body. I have that condition Elvis had and footballers have when they can suddenly drop.
"The task for me is more about training and not raising my heart level for longer periods of time than a two-minute dance. There will be a defibrillator for me.
"I have a heart condition but it doesn't mean you can't do Strictly."
The dad-of-two added that the miserable news cycle had spurred him on to embrace the show’s joy.
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He said: “I think we’ve been through a very intense news period, with the pandemic, Ukraine war, all the political chaos, kind of feels - and I kind of felt, you know, the news is almost at the nexus of the culture war that we’re in, so you become a, sort of, conduit for that.
“It’s all quite stressful, and so the idea of actually having an outlet for just pure pleasure, joy, fun, learning something new, where you totally take your mind off the news, I suddenly realised that was a huge opportunity in a way that I’d never realised before.
“I was going, you’ve been an absolute idiot saying no to this for years and years, you should grasp it, it’s a privilege to be asked, and just go and do it.”
Krishnan has found the start of training overwhelming.
He added: “My mantra is now trying to be, don’t think. And my dance partner keeps saying, ‘Just dance, don’t think.’
“If you think while you’re dancing, you’re dead, and if you think about what you’re doing, you’re going to be overwhelmed.
“And it’s very easy to be overwhelmed, because everything about Strictly is overwhelming: the lights, the costumes, just the number of people in the room, the scale of the thing, so you just don’t think about it, you just go with it.”
Strictly Come Dancing begins this Saturday at 6.35pm on BBC One.
