Laura Fox: 'Being bookies' favourite means nothing'

Dancing With The Stars contestant Laura Fox says that being the bookies' favourite to win this year’s series "doesn’t mean a bloody thing".

Speaking to journalists earlier this week ahead of the launch of the series, Galway native Fox said, "Have you been to the Galway Races? [Odds] mean nothing. You have to put the work in."

She continued, "I don't pay attention to it at all and I don't think anybody else in there does either.

"It’s just one of those things - it's fun for the bookies to throw it out there but it could all change after Sunday."

The radio and television presenter is best known from her weekend morning show on 2fm (Saturdays and Sundays, 9am-12pm) and from presenting Ireland’s Fittest Family on RTÉ One.

Fox says that the home support she has received since she was confirmed to take part in the series has been "phenomenal".

"To be completely honest, it's something that I've never shut up about any time I've ever gone home. So like all my friends and family knew that I wanted to do Dancing with the Stars."

While she was home in Galway over the Christmas period, her grandmother encouraged her to get canvassing. "My granny was like, you better get up those pubs and canvas for those votes!"

The presenter said that she found keeping her participation a secret extremely difficult. "I remember being at my friend's wedding... and it was only myself and [boyfriend] Brian that knew about it.

"I would always be the last person on the dancefloor at a wedding and I was there making excuses for why I was going to bed... I literally had to tell every single person, 'Ohh, I actually am doing this 2fm Christmas quiz tomorrow - I have to go bed because they're filming it’.

"If I had to keep it a secret for much longer than that, I would have exploded or I would have gone into complete hibernation and you wouldn't have seen me at all!"

She received the offer to take part in the show during a week of good news around her birthday in early November.

"I had just finished my last voiceover for Ireland’s Fittest Family and I got the numbers for my 2fm show which were really, really good".

She says she "couldn't contain myself with the excitement that was happening" when she received the call.

"I don't think you realise how much I wanted to do this show - I have been like sending emails since before I even had a radio show. I was marketing myself when I was still living in Galway."

While admitting that she was probably a late entrant to the line-up, she says when the call came, "To be honest, I'm even gonna lie. [I told them] 'I am up for this. Absolutely.' I wanted to do it for so long. I don't care about the reasons. You don't need to be feed my ego. Just sign up and get me in."

Fox’s number one supporter is set to be her boyfriend Brian, with whom she has been in a relationship for nine years. When she was anxious about juggling the huge commitment of the show alongside her radio commitments, a brand new podcast called The Handover and everyday life tasks, he reassured her that he would pick up the slack.

"He told me, ‘I’ve got you. I will make sure that the washing is done,’" she laughs. "Like that's my main thing - I was like, how am I gonna get my washing done?!

"He said... 'I'll stay on dinner. I'll walk the dog.’ He's happy to be there to support me and just push me along throughout all of this."

However, come show day, she is going to avoid him as he "gets more nervous for me than I get for me."

Although two previous winners of the series work alongside Fox as presenters in 2fm (Carl Mullan and Lottie Ryan), and the station is the official partner of DWTS, she does not feel that she has an unfair advantage.

"This industry is so small, and it's not really down to 2fm - it's down to the people who are watching the show and who they deem to be their favourite and that goes for dance, that goes for personality, that goes for the journey. That’s how I feel about it."

Fox, who will be dancing the jive on Sunday night to the Glee Cast’s version of River Deep, Mountain High with partner Denys Samson, says that she has suffered badly with nerves this week.

"Yesterday I feel like was the most nervous day that I've had. Everything kind of got on top of me. It's because there's such a long lead up to [the first show]", she says.

"We’ve been training for the last month straight and you live in this bubble of, ‘It's fine if I don't get it now because I can get it tomorrow’, but now that tomorrows are becoming less and less, we're three days away from the first live show and that is slightly terrifying.

"I feel better because I had a bit of a cry yesterday and I’m very much an advocate of cry, get it out and then you can move on from it."

One thing will certainly come easy to the Galwegian – the show’s strict fake tan regime. "I am literally the biggest fake tan fanatic in the whole entire world. So this is nothing new to me.

"What's actually been killing me is the fact that I haven't had my regular tanning programme in place!"

Dancing With The Stars kicks off on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player on Sunday 7 January at 6.30pm.