From winning Bake Off to dazzling on the Strictly dancefloor, John Whaite’s life seemed charmed. But behind the glitz lay a darker story, he tells Emma Higginbotham
One spring morning in 2022, John Whaite woke up with a thumping hangover. This wasn’t unusual. Struggling with feelings of emptiness after the exhilaration of Strictly Come Dancing, where he’d reached the final in the first same-sex male partnership, the celebrity baker had been drinking heavily for weeks.
What’s more unusual was that he’d woken up in his car, in Manchester, surrounded by kebab detritus. He’d gone shopping in the city the previous afternoon, met a friend for a beer, and one drink had turned into an all-night bender. In his new memoir, Dancing on Eggshells, he recalls being mortified.
“Months before, I had made history on the dancefloor, covered in sequins, not a hair out of place. I had filled children with pride and hope for their future,” he writes. “And now here I was, in last night’s clothes, stinking of alcohol, hair dishevelled and chilli sauce all over my shoes. The contrast was stark and I was deeply ashamed of myself.”
“It was a really rocky year, last year,” says John, now eight months sober and looking relaxed on a Zoom call from his home in Wigan, Lancashire. “After Strictly, going from huge audience validation to having to wash your knickers again, it makes you think oh my god, what am I doing with my life?
“The main thing I wanted to show with the book is that behind the glamour of television, there are real human beings. It’s a redemptive story of how even though I’ve been in a dark place with alcohol and mental health, I’ve pulled myself out. And if I can do it, so can anybody.”
John’s annus horribilis is central to Dancing on Eggshells. A coming-of-age story with a difference, it follows his journey from a complicated childhood to a hopeful future, via the highs of winning The Great British Bake Off aged 23, and the lows of the destructive behaviour that made his long-term partner Paul, to whom the book is dedicated, move out.
“I’m pretty terrified to release it, because I’ve given a lot away,” admits the 34-year-old. “But I’ve always been very honest, because secrets only erode you from the inside out. And being sober was a really positive thing as I was writing, because it meant that I had to deal with painful memories. I couldn’t just lose them in a bottle of wine after I’d written it, I had to confront them. It was so cathartic.”
Growing up with his two older sisters on a Lancashire dairy farm, John was a natural performer who loved the limelight, but obsessed about how he looked. He recalls making his mum stop the car on his way to school so he could flatten his fluffy hair in puddle water, and considers that an early sign of the body dysmorphia and bulimia that continue to dog him. He always knew he was gay – “When I found myself looking at the men’s underwear section in the Next catalogue, and something twinged inside me, I kind of realised then,” he grins – but his first sexual experience at 13, with a man of 30, makes for troubling reading.
“The reason I wrote about that is to demonstrate how vulnerable people are at that age, particularly people who are questioning their sexuality. I think they’re more susceptible to exploitation. It was consensual, I wanted it, but the fact of the matter is a 13-year-old boy cannot legally consent, and so…” he pauses. “I hope it doesn’t get too much attention, but if it helps parents and their teenage children have those conversations about protecting themselves, then I’ll sleep a bit more soundly.”
With his heart set on an acting career, John applied to drama school, but his mum and stepdad persuaded their super-bright boy to go down the academic route. He duly went to Oxford University to study modern languages but, feeling that he didn’t fit in, soon dropped out. After meeting Paul on a Facebook dating page, he opted for a law degree closer to home in Manchester instead.
During a particularly grim bout of depression, John started baking as therapy and became hooked. He’d watch The Great British Bake Off religiously, and recalls making 10 different batches of scones in one day, just to get them exactly right. Thanks to his recent ADHD diagnosis, this all now makes sense. “That’s just an example of the ADHD hyper-focus,” he says, “and that’s why I’m glad that I now know I’ve got it, because it does explain a lot of that kind of obsessive behaviour. I think a lot of my success is down to the ADHD to a certain extent. So is some of the more destructive behaviour,” he laughs, “so it’s a double-edged sword, but it’s powerful knowledge to have.”
In 2012, John beat 7,000 hopefuls to a place in series three of Bake Off. The timing wasn’t great, as filming coincided with his finals, but he won both the series and a first class degree. Does he look back at that time fondly? “Yes, because that was me saying ‘I will do what I want to do in life, and you just try and stop me!’ I do wish I’d not drunk as much alcohol during that time, and I wish I’d looked after my mental health more. But actually it turned out bloody well for me, so I can’t lament it too much.”
In the following years, John wrote five cookbooks, appeared regularly on TV, and since 2015 he’s been creating recipes for Waitrose, with readers’ favourites including carrot cake with cranberry and lime, his mushroom and bacon filo pies, and a spectacular Pride rainbow cake.
When the professional engagements began to dwindle, however, John ditched baking and started training to be a barrister – until he became suicidally depressed. A stint working on a remote farm in Canada helped get him back on track, then he landed on his feet with a regular cooking slot on Channel 4 daytime show Steph’s Packed Lunch. Seven months later, he received the phonecall he’d “secretly longed for since Bake Off”: to take part in Strictly.
Speaking to Weekend back in 2021, he couldn’t contain his delight, particularly the significance of being in a same-sex couple with professional dancer Johannes Radebe. “If I’d had that kind of representation on TV when I was growing up, I don’t think I would have felt half the shame I felt,” he said at the time.
Yet despite their closeness on camera, all was not as it seemed. Johannes kept his distance, disappearing every lunchtime and straight after rehearsal, to the point that John thought he actually hated him.
“It was difficult, because being the obsessive, hyper-focused kind of guy that I am, I wanted to completely be engulfed by this partnership, but there was this firm professional boundary in place,” he recalls. “We had a laugh in the studio, but we didn’t spend time together outside of that. Let’s not forget that it was stressful for Johannes too, because to choreograph a dance between two men is a challenge – things don’t work with two 6ft 2 blokes that would work with a daintier person – and he was getting homophobic and racist abuse at the same time. But I shouldn’t have drunk as much as I did. I was drinking red wine and whisky most nights.”
Why? “That was my coping mechanism, because it was so stressful,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, it was an exciting time, and I loved it, but there was so much pressure from all these different sources: the competition, moving down to London, not having to face the real world. I was picked up in a taxi in the morning and taken to work, and then dropped off at night. I had no major responsibility, and I just got carried away with it.”
The show may have been tough, but the Strictly tour that followed was a pressure-free “five-week party”. John and Johannes became inseparable, eating, drinking and shopping together. But once the glittery costumes were packed away, life took a downward turn. His partying spiralled out of control, and Paul moved back to his parents’ house, taking their dog, Abel, with him.
“It was a horrible, horrible time,” says John. “I felt like I didn’t know who I was. I missed being on the dancefloor with Johannes. We had a special relationship and I missed it, and it made me question everything: where I wanted to live, where I wanted to be in terms of my career.”
More disappointment followed when he was cast as Prince Charming in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, only for it to unexpectedly close before he joined. Creating a profile on X-rated subscription site OnlyFans to show off his gym-honed body and, he admits, for the lucrative payments, dragged him down further.
“The whole of last year was like an out-of-body experience. I was so detached from who I am, and so detached from reality. Excuse my French, but I just fucked up. I almost lost my partner, and I almost lost my career because of OnlyFans,” he says. “I’m so grateful that me and Paul managed to navigate our way through it. People think that relationships are this magical journey, but they’re not! They are negotiations, compromise, hard work, and sadness as well as laughter. I’m glad that time is over, but it only emboldened us as a partnership.”
The turning point of a miserable year was a miserable Christmas. John woke up on the floor on Christmas Day with the mother of all hangovers, and the acrid smell of vomit beside him. Later that day, still horribly hungover, he had such a furious row with his mum over the cooking that she asked him to leave. “It wasn’t rock bottom, but it was definitely falling down the cliff and banging my head on the sides as I fell,” he says.
“I’d tried countless times in the past to give up alcohol, because I knew that it wasn’t right for me, with my mental health being as volatile as it is. So after the year I had last year, to end with such a devastating Christmas – I ruined it for my entire family – I realised that it was just time to get a grip, grow up, and start being the man that I wanted to become.” Three days later, he quit for good.
How is life now? “With my sobriety and my ADHD medication, life just feels lovely. I’m organised. I get stuff done around the house. I sleep. Paul keeps saying that I’m a different person, and all the best bits of me that he loved are now the main parts of me. And we’ve saved so much money! If we ever get a craving to go out, we put the money we would have spent into our pension pots, and it’s so beautiful to see our retirement plan going up and up.”
What’s more, the stage is finally beckoning – John’s in panto as Dandini this Christmas. “My agent and I laugh that I was meant to play Prince Charming in the West End, and now I’m playing his servant in Bradford. So it’s not quite the dizzy heights that I expected, but do you know what? That’s a good thing for me. I need to take things slowly, and it’s going to be great fun.”
It’s no surprise that John has peppered Dancing on Eggshells with recipes, from the hearty chicken soup of his healing Canada stint to the millionaire's brownies he baked weekly for his fellow Strictly stars. His favourite, though, is the corned beef hash made by Paul’s mum.
“The beautiful thing about that is it’s so simple. It’s about making food for love and for nourishment rather than for showing off. And that’s the perfect allegory of the book,” he concludes. “It’s about realising that external validation and performance means nothing. What means the most are the truly meaningful relationships. As difficult as some situations in my life have been, I feel very privileged to have loved, and been loved, as deeply as I have.”
Dancing on Eggshells: kitchen, ballroom and the messy inbetween (Kyle Books) is out now
An edited version of this interview appeared in Waitrose Weekend in August 2023 (c) Waitrose