Former Strictly Come Dancing star Danny John-Jules has slammed the BBC show, branding it ''dirty'' and ''filthy'' - as he denied allegations he bullied his dance partner.
Danny, 61, was partnered with dancer Amy Dowden when he took part in the sixteenth series of the dance show in 2018.
The couple were eliminated in week eight days just after it was alleged the actor had reduced Amy to tears in training.
Red Dwarf star Danny has now claimed his hard work in practicing left him resented by the show's producers.
He claims they invented bullying allegations to evict him after he received the first ten score of the season in episode five.
Jules addressed the claims on the My Time Capsule podcast, hosted by Michael Fenton Stevens.
He said: "It's a dirty show on that level. On that level it's a filthy show - It's based on tabloid stories.
"The thing about Strictly is that it doesn't matter who you are, you're going into a well-oiled machine which at that time was the biggest show on telly.
"I already knew when I went in there what they were expecting of me.
"Because I wasn't giving them anything to chew on, they just went out there and made it up.
"I said to everyone, what did I do then, what did I actually do that everyone was so unhappy about?
"I don't know, nobody has actually told me.
"They came up with this cockamamie story about bullying basically - it was basically dog whistling, that I was bullying my partner".
A BBC spokesperson said: "This claim is categorically untrue."
Reports at the time alleged that Jules had yelled and sworn at Dowden, saying "I’m the star, not you.”
Jules defied the allegations, suggesting they had been created by "racists in pointy hats”.
He told the podcast: "What I want to know is why was a tabloid journalist backstage in one of the judge's dressing rooms?
"The first person I looked down on when I came out on the set that night when I was evicted was a tabloid journalist sitting right there on the stairway, having just come out of Shirley Ballas' dressing room.
"I've never heard of the media being backstage on any show except Strictly.
"That was the night I was evicted. I knew I was going home that night.
''So apparently after I got evicted I went into the bar cursing everybody saying I should have won, they're all idiots.
"My mother was there, 84-year-old mother, with my niece and oldest friends, and that's what [the newspapers] said I was doing.
"It's baloney, every word of it is baloney."
