BBC Strictly Come Dancing Billy Monger's 'newfound confidence' after accident left him feeling 'so helpless'

BBC's Strictly Come Dancing returns for a glitzy Christmas special, which is great news for fans who have missed watching the dancefloor every weekend.

One of this year's celebrity contestants, racing driver and TV presenter Billy Monger is no stranger when it comes to competing, with him having scored podiums in British Formula 3 and following in Lewis Hamilton's footsteps by winning the Pau Grand Prix in European Formula 3 back in 2019.

Billy became a double amputee after he was seriously injured in a high-speed collision during a Formula 4 race in 2017 when he was just 17 years old. During an interview in 2019, his mum said: "Billy’s just a normal teenager who likes to go out clubbing with his mates", but despite this positivity, Billy explained he felt frustrated watching other young drivers race: "I hated being a spectator. It wasn’t like I didn’t respect those guys, but I felt so helpless on the sidelines, knowing there was nothing I could do to get back out there and beat them.”

Seven months after surgery to remove both legs, Billy was back racing in a modified car that catered to his disabilities, as he confirmed: "I lost my legs but not my daredevil spirit."

In 2021, he raised £3million for Comic Relief through walking, kayaking, and cycling 140 miles across England, which was an enormous test both physically and mentally.

Two years on, Billy and younger sister Bonnie competed in the first celebrity version of Race Across the World, with the racing driver admitting that Bonnie is one of the heroes from his accident. His younger sister went to the track in the aftermath of the crash, grabbed his hand and old him he was going to be all right: "She gave me the will to keep fighting."

Earlier this year, Billy set a new world record for a double amputee in the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii: "I've spent the last 12 months training 20 hours a week", before adding: "but the thought of donning sequins in front of Craig Revel Horwood fills me with a fear I've never experienced before." He confessed that this is as "far from my comfort zone as it can get."

Speaking of his time on Strictly, the 25-year-old said: "The intensity and duration of the main show, and how much commitment that is, can't be underestimated.

"But having been in this world for a few weeks, there is part of me going, 'I don't want this to end.' I want it to keep going and continue to push the boundaries."

Billy has gushed that the show has given him a "newfound confidence" and that he "wouldn't rule out doing the main show in the future", with the star confident he could cope with the much more rigorous main series of Strictly that can last up to 13 weeks for the finalists.

Discussing his professional partner Nadiya Bychkova for how she's managed to work around his prosthetics to create his routines, Billy said: "It's challenging with my prosthetics but Nadiya did all the choreography and put all of those moves I could do into a routine." He added: "She loves dancing so much and she wants to push me - at the start there were some moves where I was thinking, ‘Ooh,

I don’t know if that’s something I’ll be able to do’. But we had to put trust in each other that we could adapt it, that we could make it work for us."

He explained that his family are "big Strictly fans", and that he's doing the show for them but to also raise awareness for him appearing on Comic Relief next year, where the BBC will be releasing a documentary in March showing Billy's one-day endurance challenge in Kona, Hawaii.

After swapping his racing gear for sequins, Billy joked that he's just hoping his "leg doesn't fall off mid-dance!"

Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special will air at 3:55pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Christmas Day.