BBC Strictly Come Dancing star Jamie Borthwick mortifying attempt to chat up EastEnders' co-star

EastEnders legend Jamie Borthwick, who has signed up for Strictly, has played Albert Square’s Jay Brown since 2006 and his crush on one of his co-stars once led him to chat her up, spurred on by another cast member

Strictly contestant Jamie Borthwick revealed he fell in love with his older EastEnders colleague’s ‘shapely legs’ and wanted to marry her.

New Strictly Come Dancing signing, actor Jamie Borthwick, has been playing the role of cheeky chappy Jay Brown on EastEnders for the last 18 years. The star, who is now 30, joined the iconic BBC soap when he was around 12 so has quite literally grown up on Albert Square. Therefore it’s entirely natural that the red-blooded young lad would develop crushes during that time, which Jamie did - on one of his older female co-stars. But rather than keep his feelings under wraps and admire the lovely lady from afar, he decided to make a rather embarrassing advance on her, which was very much encouraged by another naughty male cast member.

Jamie recalled the mortifying moment in a previous interview with TV Times when he revealed that he had always been totally enamoured with Emma Barton, 47, who plays the wide-eyed Honey Mitchell and who also took part in Strictly in 2019. He was just a teenager when he first laid eyes on her and her beauty blew him away. "I was about 14 when I first set eyes on Emma Barton," he recalled: "I fell in love with her long, shapely legs and I wanted to marry her." It was thanks to the mischievous Perry Fenwick, who played Billy, that he decided to act on it though.

"Perry told me to chat her up, and I remember walking over to her and saying, 'Alright darlin'... wow, you smell nice." It brought the house down and we still laugh about it now," he said. "I love working with Emma. I won't say what it is, but we have something in common that's very rare and very special that brings us together. I still try and chat her up and say that one day, we'll get married, but she's having none of it!"

Jamie, who appeared on the Christmas Strictly special in December last year and won alongside professional dancer Nancy Xu, has also revealed that he doesn’t plan to impose a sex ban on himself during the intensive training. He has been romantically linked to another co-star recently, Jazzy Phoenix, who plays Nadine Keller, although still maintains that he’s single.

Speaking about his plans ahead of the show he told MailOnline: "No booze ban for me. I've never drunk ever in my life and no one loves me, so I can't do a sex ban! No bans for me, just loads of food." He also revealed he won’t beleaving Albert Square in a black cab anytime soon and will follow in the footsteps of Scott Maslen, Kellie Bright and many other stars by dancing through the pain.

"I'm not taking a break no," he said. "I'm still there so I'm doing both shows but we're lucky - EastEnders is literally filmed across the road, there's not far to go and I've just budgeted that I'm going to be a bit N/A for the next however long. But again, I'm used to it all really, I've been doing it a long time so it's good, it's nothing scary."

Who is your favourite Strictly contestant of all time? Let us know in the comments below.