Strictly Come Dancing host Tess Daly has been keeping her real name secret for decades.
The 52-year-old has always used the name Tess, and has been presenting the hit BBC One show under the moniker since 2004.
But fans were shocked to discover that the mum-of-two has a completely different name on her birth certificate.
Even husband Vernon Kay doesn’t call her by her real name, and her mum Sylvia is the only one who calls her it.
In a new interview, Tess confessed she was actually christened Helen Elizabeth Daly, and hasn’t officially changed her name out of respect for her parents.
When she started her career as a model at the age of 17, there was already someone with the name ‘Helen Davies’ at the agency, so Tess was told to change it because her name was deemed too similar.
“My mum’s really the only person who still calls me Helen, and that’s not often,” she told Weekend.
“She tends to call me ‘love’, so when she does say ‘Helen’ it can take me a while to respond,” Tess laughed.
The TV star said she was given the name because her agent at the time was “obsessed” with the actress Nastassja Kinski who starred in a film back in 1979 called Tess.
“So Tess it was. I was gullible and impressionable. Mind you, two weeks later I was in Japan then travelled the world. Paris, Milan, New York,” she explained, adding that her agent thought she looked just like German actress Nastassja.
“I’ve never changed it by deed poll or anything because I think it would be disrespectful to my parents,” she stated.
Even though Vernon doesn’t call her Helen, she married the TV hunk under her real name when they exchanged vows in 2003.
And Tess isn’t the only TV star who has kept her real name a secret.
This Morning and The X Factor presenter Dermot O’Leary isn’t actually called Dermot, and has been using his middle name as his professional moniker for decades.
The 48-year-old, who has both British and Irish citizenship despite being born in Essex, is actually called Sean Dermot Fintan O’Leary Jr.
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