Strictly Come Dancing 2023: Meet Krishnan Guru-Murthy as he reveals why he finally agreed to take part

British journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy is set to take part in Strictly Come Dancing 2023. The 53-year-old is the lead presenter of Channel 4 News and also presents Unreported World, a foreign-affairs documentary series.

Ahead of the first show of the 21st season, he has revealed why he finally agreed to take part in Strictly Come Dancing after the challenges of the pandemic and being diagnosed with a genetic heart condition.

His career began back in 1988 with the BBC’s DEF II discussion programme Open to Question and the youth current-affairs programme Reportage. During his studies at Oxford, he presented BBC2’s Asian current-affairs programmes East and Network East.

Arguably three years later is when he got his big breakthrough, when he presented and reported for children’s news programme Newsround from 1991 to 1994. He then worked as a producer and reporter for Newsnight for three years.

Guru-Murthy joined Channel 4 News in 1998 and is the programme’s second-longest-serving presenter, behind Jon Snow. In 2010 and 2014, The Royal Television Society Journalism Awards nominated him for its News Presenter of the Year award.

When asked about why he is joining Strictly now after being approached before, Guru Murthy said:

“Something changed this year. I have been asked to do Strictly before and it has always been a pretty hard no. But this year I think it’s maybe a combination of post pandemic, the time of my life, knowing lots of people have been going through tough times.

“I just thought you only live once and this is going to be amazing fun. Why deprive yourself from that amount of joy in your life when you don’t need to?

“It’s going to be tough, fitting it all in and I had about three conversations with people I trust about whether I should do it or not, and they all instantly said yes, so now is the time to do it, it just felt right.”

Talking about the biggest challenges of his role on Strictly, Krishnan said: “Everything about it is a big challenge. The biggest thing I am scared of is physically not being able to do this. I am not a fit person and I have never exercised really.

“I am overweight and I have got loads of things wrong with me, so that’s been my biggest worry about whether I can actually physically do it. Then of course, there is the basic question of, can I dance? And I don’t know the answer to that, I will find out!”