Strictly Come Dancing champion Kelvin Fletcher revealed that his family and friends won the Glitterball after betting on him.
The 38-year-old Emmerdale star came to popularity on ITV serial Emmerdale between 1996 and 2016, before winning the 2019 edition of Strictly with professional partner Oti Mabuse as a last-minute replacement for an injured Jamie Laing.
Despite his initial joy, the actor admitted that his odds of making the final were slim.
‘Although Ladbroke’s had me down as the favourite in the final, at the outset my win was so unlikely that a few of my friends had done very well by putting bets on me before the series began,’ he said.
Kelvin’s family and friends appear to have had the last laugh, as they all ended up with more more than they planned for in their bank accounts.
‘My brother got odds of 16–1, which translated into a nice pay-out. One of my friends benefited from my win to the tune of £17,000,’ he added to The Mirror.
Kelvin’s dancing days are over, as he now owns a farm in the Peak District with wife Liz, where the couple lives with their four children.
The couple has a daughter, Marnie, five, a son, Milo, three, and twin boys, Maximus and Mateusz, who were born earlier this year.
Kelvin frequently updates his social media sites with farm updates, many of which include adorable family photos in the great outdoors.
The farm life of the Fletcher family was previously featured in the TV series Kelvin’s Big Farming Adventure, after the family relocated from Manchester to the countryside during lockdown.
The family ‘de-camp to the countryside’ for the summer to construct a new life on their 120-acre farm on the outskirts of the Peak District National Park in the six-part series.
Last year, Kelvin labelled comparisons between Kelvin’s Big Farming Adventure and Jeremy Clarkson’s Clarkson’s Farm as ‘unfair’, insisting that theirs is a ‘completely different show’.