Dan Walker has spoken out about a peculiar trolling incident involving recently revealed Strictly Come Dancing star Les Dennis.
This week, the former Family Fortunes presenter was unveiled as part of the line-up for the forthcoming season of the BBC dance series, in which he’ll compete with Angela Rippon, Adam Thomas, and Zara McDermott.
Trolls quickly took over the TV presenter’s Wikipedia page, altering it to suggest that he’d been deceiving us all and is actually a horse.
Several screenshots of the entries have been captured and shared on social media, with one reading: ‘Leslie Dennis Heseltine (born 12 October 1953) is a purebred horse pretending to be an English television presenter, actor, and comedian.’
Another said he was a ‘television presenter, actor, comedian, and Race Horse’.
Despite the removal of some of the submissions, the trolls remained tenacious and continued to try their luck.
However, the page was later shut, as someone keeping track of everything pointed out.
‘People keep changing Les Dennis’ Wikipedia to claim he’s actually a horse, so they’ve locked the page for vandalism,’ someone shared on Twitter.
The joke piqued the interest of broadcaster Dan Walker, 46, who previously participated on Strictly in 2021.
Sharing a post about the trolling, Dan wrote: ‘You’ve got to admire the dedication.’
At the conclusion of his reply, he included an emoji of a horse to express how amusing he found everything.
Many others enjoyed the lighthearted jest, with one person on Twitter expressing concern on how Les would manage taking to the dancing.
‘Will be interesting to see how a horse handles the Charleston or the Quick Step,’ they wrote.
‘Why is Les being saddled with these allegations,’ someone else shared.
Another added: ‘When asked if he is indeed a horse, Les was heard to reply “Neigh”.’
Les’ past dance expertise, however, will undoubtedly serve him well after performing in West End shows such as Hairspray, Legally Blonde, Only Fools And Horses The Musical, Chicago, and The Addams Family.
Les had accidentally let go ahead of time that he’d been cleaning up his dance shoes as the BBC was preparing to unveil the celebrity as the final name for the Strictly line-up on Friday.
Explaining the blunder, Les confessed to Ben Shepherd on GMB: ‘What happened was, the Strictly producers asked me to send a playlist of songs you might like.
‘I’m totally hopeless with social media and all that so my daughter put my playlist together for me, and put “Strictly by Les Dennis”, so I could send it to my agent by email but I must have done a fat finger error and put it on Twitter instead.’
The playlist had around 140 songs, with a major emphasis on The Beatles, James Taylor, and other’real old school’ music, according to Les.
Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC later this year.
Source My Celebrity Life.
