Stacey Dooley

Anastacia Jaclyn Dooley MBE[2] (born 9 March 1987),[1] commonly known as Stacey Dooley, is an English television presenter, journalist, documentary filmmaker, media personality, and author. Dooley rose to prominence in 2008 when she appeared as a participant on Blood, Sweat and T-shirts. Since then, she has made social-issue-themed television documentaries for BBC Three concerning child labour and women in developing countries.[3]

Stacey Dooley MBE
Dooley at an event organised by War on Want in 2009 protesting against sweatshops
Born	Anastacia Jaclyn Dooley (1987-03-09) 9 March 1987 Luton, Bedfordshire, England
Occupation	Television presenter journalist documentary filmmaker media personality author
Years active	2008–present
Employer	BBC
Agent	Curtis Brown[1]
Television	Blood, Sweat and T-shirts Stacey Dooley Investigates Strictly Come Dancing Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star
Partner(s)	Kevin Clifton (2019–present)

Dooley was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting. In 2018, she won the sixteenth series of Strictly Come Dancing with dance partner Kevin Clifton and released her debut book, Stacey Dooley on the Frontline with the Women Who Fight Back, which reached the Sunday Times bestseller list. Since 2019, Dooley has presented Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star.

Early life

Anastacia Jaclyn Dooley was born on 9 March 1987 in Luton, Bedfordshire. Her father was from Ireland, and left the family when Stacey was two years old.[4][5] She grew up in Luton and studied at Stopsley High School. Dooley left school at 15 and worked as a shop assistant, selling perfumes at Luton Airport. She also worked in a hairdressers in Bramingham.[6]

Career

2008–2017: Television career and Stacey Dooley Investigates

Dooley first appeared on television when she travelled to India as one of the participants on the documentary television series Blood, Sweat and T-shirts in April 2008. Dooley and the other participants were selected to illustrate the typical fashion-obsessed consumer. Thanks to her appearance on the show, and partly because of her interest in labour laws in developing countries, a series was commissioned with Dooley as presenter. Stacey Dooley Investigates began in August 2009 and a two-part special was shown on BBC Three throughout August and September 2009. It also aired in Australia on ABC2 from 2 June 2010.[7] In October 2010, BBC Three aired two further programmes, the first on former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the second on sex trafficking and underage sex slavery in Cambodia.

In 2011, BBC Three aired Tourism and the Truth: Stacey Dooley Investigates. Over two episodes, Dooley investigated how tourism in Thailand and Kenya affects employees there, in particular with regard to wages, corruption and environmental changes.[8] Dooley also presented the CBBC series Show Me What You're Made Of.

Shot in Dooley's native Luton, My Hometown Fanatics was broadcast on BBC Three on 20 February 2012. In the programme, Dooley interviewed Islamists and the English Defence League. A three-part series titled Coming Here Soon was broadcast on BBC Three in June and July 2012, in which Dooley explored the lives of young people in three countries affected by the global financial crisis: Greece, Ireland and Japan.[9] The programme on Japan was criticised by some because it ignored the Samaritans guidelines on reporting of suicide.[10] While Dooley was in the United States in 2012, she created two series of Stacey Dooley in the USA where she investigated issues affecting teens across America such as: Girls Behind Bars, Border Wars, Homelessness and Kids in the Crossfire.[1] In 2015, Dooley created the documentary series Beaten By My Boyfriend where she investigated domestic abuse within the UK.

In 2016, Dooley presented Stacey Dooley in Cologne: The Blame Game, about the 2015 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, which aired on 29 January. She also presented Stacey Dooley: Hate and Pride in Orlando where she travelled to Orlando, Florida in the aftermath of the Pulse Bar shootings. On 30 July, Dooley appeared on the BBC's Celebrity Mastermind where her specialist subject was the television series Girls.

In November 2016, Dooley appeared in a BBC Three series Brainwashing Stacey, where she went to a US anti-abortion summer camp and then to some African big-game hunters. Stacey also made a documentary Sex in Strange Places for which she travelled to Turkey, Brazil and Russia to explore people's different attitudes towards sex and prostitution.[1] In the documentary, Dooley falsely portrayed a Turkish woman as a Syrian sex worker living in Istanbul. The misrepresentation led to the Turkey episode of the documentary being removed from BBC iPlayer.[11]

In December 2016, Dooley was stopped by police in Tokyo while filming Young Sex For Sale In Japan, a documentary about child sexual exploitation in that country. She was held on the street for two hours by police who were investigating their confrontation with two men "protecting" some of the girls, who had called the police on the film crew. After initially being confronted by two men who demanded "no movies", the pair tried to use physical force against the film crew to make them leave the area. The story was released a few days before the programme was made available in February 2017.[12]

In 2017, Dooley presented CBBC's The Pets Factor. She also presented the documentary Canada's Lost Girls in March 2017 in which she travelled across Canada investigating the various factors which played a part in the disappearance and murder of over 1200 Native American women. Dooley narrated the documentary The Natives: This Is Our America where she investigated the lives of young Native Americans, and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.[13]

2018–present: Television career, debut book, and Strictly Come Dancing

In April 2018, Dooley took part in a BBC show: Celebrities on the NHS Front-line to celebrate the 70th birthday of the National Health Service. In the 2018 series of Stacey Dooley Investigates, she travelled to Russia, Florida, Iraq, and Hungary to explore more challenging issues such as child exploitation, sex offenders, war, domestic violence, pollution in the fashion industry, and coming face-to-face with an ISIS soldier for which she won a One World Media Award. The episodes of this series won the title of the Most Watched Documentaries on BBC iPlayer.[1]

Dooley published her debut book in February 2018: Stacey Dooley, On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back. The book features topics concerning sex trafficking, domestic violence, gender equality and child exploitation.[1] The book became a Sunday Times Bestseller.[1] She also had her own UK book tour, hosted by Viv Groskop.[14]

Dooley was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.[15] In 2012,[16] and again in 2015, Dooley was a member of the judging panel for The Observer Ethical Awards.[17]

On 16 August 2018, Dooley was announced as the eighth contestant to take part in the sixteenth series of Strictly Come Dancing;[18] on 15 December 2018, she was announced as the winner of the series alongside dance partner Kevin Clifton.[19] Following her win, shortly afterwards the BBC announced Dooley as co-presenter of New Year Live on BBC One, alongside fellow Strictly 2018 contestant Joe Sugg.[20] She also took part in BBC One's Children in Need where she explored the number of homeless young people in the UK.[1]

In 2019, Dooley was announced as Grazia's new contributing editor for Investigations.[1] She appeared on The National Television Awards 2019, and presented BBC's The Nine To Five With Stacey Dooley and The One Show. Dooley took part in The 2019 Strictly Come Dancing Arena Tour throughout the UK.[21] Dooley then began presenting the BBC Three reality competition series Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star.[22] In July 2019, it was announced that Dooley would appear as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race UK.[23] In August 2019, she released the documentaries Stacey Meets the IS Brides, and Stacey Dooley, Face to Face with The Bounty Hunters which became the most watched documentary on BBC IPlayer.[24]

In February 2019, after she posted photos of herself holding a Ugandan child on her Instagram account during a trip to Uganda organised by British charity Comic Relief, Dooley was accused on social media of reinforcing white saviour stereotypes. In response to a news story about Dooley, British MP David Lammy tweeted "The world does not need any more white saviours. As I've said before, this just perpetuates tired and unhelpful stereotypes. Let's instead promote voices from across the continent of Africa and have serious debate." Ugandan campaign group No White Saviours wrote on Dooley's Instagram: "White saviourism is a symptom of white supremacy and something we all have to work together to deconstruct."[25] Gaby Hinsliff, a columnist at The Guardian wrote: "The sight of celebrities making weepy 'personal journeys' towards understanding poverty has begun to feel more and more crass, especially where it overshadows the people whose experiences they’re meant to be understanding in the first place."[26] Dooley told The Guardian she had no regrets over the incident and she would do the same again.[27] In June 2019, Comic Relief founder Richard Curtis told members of the British Parliament that the charity would stop sending celebrities abroad as a consequence of the controversy.[28]

In August 2019, Dooley was criticised for calling a Muslim prayer gesture 'an IS salute' in a Panorama documentary on IS brides. A BBC spokesperson said that the clip had been removed from the documentary, while the teaser clip had been edited.[29]

Honours and awards

Dooley was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.[30]

In 2018, the programme Stacey Dooley: Face To Face With ISIS received the Popular Features Award at the One World Media Awards.[31]

Personal life

Dooley considers herself a feminist and has made documentaries regarding gender equality.[32] Since early 2019, Dooley has been in a relationship with Strictly Come Dancing dance partner Kevin Clifton.[33]

Filmography

Television

Series title	No.	Episode title	Episode date	Role
2008: Blood, Sweat and T-shirts	(4 episodes)		22 April – 13 May 2008	Participant
2009–present: Stacey Dooley Investigates[34]
Child Labour	1	Kids for Sale	1 October 2009	Presenter
	2	Kids with Machetes	8 October 2009	Presenter
Child Labour Series 2	1	Kids with Guns	7 October 2010	Presenter
	2	Sex Trafficking in Cambodia	14 October 2010	Presenter
Holiday Hell	1	Thailand: Tourism and the Truth	28 March 2011	Presenter
	2	Tourism and the Truth: Kenya	9 June 2011	Presenter
–	–	My Hometown Fanatics	20 February 2012	Presenter
–	–	The Truth About Magaluf	7 January 2013	Presenter
New Drug Frontiers	1	Cocaine Capital of the World	12 August 2013	Presenter
	2	Thailand's Drug Craze	19 August 2013	Presenter
	3	Europe's Dirty Drugs Secret	26 August 2013	Presenter
The Truth About...	1	Booze, Bar Crawls and Bulgaria	30 September 2013	Presenter
	2	Sex, Stags and Prague	7 October 2013	Presenter
	3	Crime, Carnage and Cancun	14 October 2013	Presenter
	4	Domestic Violence	26 June 2014	Presenter
–	–	Beaten by My Boyfriend[35]	25 March 2015	Presenter
Series 6	1	Meth and Madness in Mexico	7 April 2015	Presenter
	2	Ecstasy Wars	14 April 2015	Presenter
	3	The Cannabis Smugglers	21 April 2015	Presenter
Series 7	1	Saving the Cyber Sex Girls	19 October 2015	Presenter
	2	World's Worst Place to Be a Woman?	26 October 2015	Presenter
Series 8: Sex in Strange Places	1	Turkey	8 March 2016	Presenter
	2	Brazil	15 March 2016	Presenter
	3	Russia	22 March 2016	Presenter
–	1	In Cologne: The Blame Game (14 min short)	28 January 2016	Presenter
	1	Hate and Pride in Orlando (15 min short)	24 June 2016	Presenter
Series 9: Migrant Kids in Crisis	1	Greece (30 mins)	19 April 2016	Presenter
–	1	On the Frontline: Girls, Guns and Isis	15 November 2016	Presenter
Series 10: Brainwashing Stacey	1	Anti-Abortion Camp	29 November 2016	Presenter
	2	Living with Big Game Hunters	6 December 2016	Presenter
Series 11	1	Young Sex for Sale in Japan	28 February 2017	Presenter
	2	Canada’s Lost Girls (40 mins)	7 March 2017	Presenter
	3	Mums Selling Their Kids for Sex (35 mins)	16 May 2017	Presenter
	4	Kids Selling Drugs Online (29 mins)	14 July 2017	Presenter
	5	The Billion Pound Party (28 mins)	7 August 2017	Presenter
Series 12	1	Second Chance Sex Offenders	24 January 2018	Presenter
	2	Russia's War on Women	31 January 2018	Presenter
	3	Face to Face with Isis (33 mins)	7 February 2018	Presenter
	4	Gypsy Kids Taken from Home (42 mins)	14 February 2018	Presenter
Series 13	1	Shot by My Neighbour (43 mins)	10 September 2018	Presenter
	2	Face to Face with Armageddon (39 mins)	18 September 2018	Presenter
	3	Fashion's Dirty Secrets	8 October 2018	Presenter
	4	The Young and Homeless	13 November 2018	Presenter
Series 14	1	Face to Face with the Bounty Hunters	31 July 2019	Presenter
	2	Nigeria's Female Suicide Bombers (44 mins)	14 August 2019	Presenter
	3	Face to Face with the Arms Dealers (44 mins)	29 August 2019	Presenter
Series 15	1	The Whale Hunters (43 mins)	22 January 2020	Presenter
	2	On the Psych Ward (47 mins)	19 February 2020	Presenter
	3	Spycam Sex Criminals (40 mins)	1 April 2020	Presenter
	4	Locked up with the Lifers	19 April 2020	Presenter
	5	Costa del Narcos	26 April 2020	Presenter
	6	Lockdown Heroes (29 mins)	6 May 2020	Presenter
2011–2017: Show Me What You're Made Of
Series 1–7	(35 episodes)		12 December 2011 – 15 May 2017	Presenter
2012: Coming Here Soon[36]
Series 1	1	Greece, Bust and Broken	26 June 2012	Presenter
	2	Ireland, Lost and Leaving	3 July 2012	Presenter
	3	Japan, Fall of the Rising Sun	10 July 2012	Presenter
2012, 2014: Stacey Dooley in the USA[37]
Series 1	1	Girls Behind Bars	22 October 2012	Presenter
	2	Gay to Straight	29 October 2012	Presenter
	3	Border Wars	5 November 2012	Presenter
Series 2	4	Giving Up My Baby	3 July 2014	Presenter
	5	Homeless in Detroit	10 July 2014	Presenter
	6	Kids in the Crossfire	17 July 2014	Presenter
2012: Superstorm USA: Caught on Camera[38]	(1 episode)		15 November 2012	Narrator
2015–2016: Don't Tell the Bride	(4 episodes)		22 December 2015 – 12 January 2016	Presenter
2017: The Natives: This is Our America[39]	(1 episode)		21 February 2017	Narrator
2017–2018: The Pets Factor
Series 1–4	(50 episodes)		20 June 2017 – 21 November 2018	Presenter
2018: Strictly Come Dancing (series 16)	(25 episodes)		8 September 2018 – 15 December 2018	Winner
2019: Joe Lycett's Got Your Back	(1 episode)		3 May 2019	Guest
2019–present: Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star[40]
Series 1	(8 episodes)		6 March – 24 April 2019	Presenter
Series 2	(8 episodes)		14 May – 2 July 2020	Presenter
2019: The One Show	(5 episodes)		29 July – 2 August 2019	Guest presenter
2019–present: Panorama
–	1	Stacey Meets the IS Brides	5 August 2019	Presenter
–	2	Stacey Dooley and the Lockdown Babies	3 August 2020	Presenter
2019: Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over[41]
Series 1	1	Open Marriage	4 September 2019	Presenter
	2	The Family Who Live Online	11 September 2019	Presenter
	3	The Family Without Rules	18 September 2019	Presenter
	4	Cage Fighting Teen	25 September 2019	Presenter
	5	Mormons	2 October 2019	Presenter
	6	Landed Gentry	9 October 2019	Presenter
2020: Eastenders: Secrets From The Square	NA		22nd June 2020 - present	Presenter

Tours

• Stacey Dooley Book Tour (2018)
• Strictly Come Dancing Live! (2018–2019)
• Strictly Come Dancing Live! (2019–2020)
• Conversations with Stacey Dooley (2020)

Bibliography

• Stacey Dooley (2018). On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back. Ebury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78594-299-0.

References

1. "Agency biography". Curtis Brown. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
2. "STRICTLY COME DANCING Winner Kevin Clifton Stars In ROCK OF AGES At The Belgrade Theatre". Broadway World. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
3. Kellaway, Kate (13 August 2017). "Stacey Dooley: 'People tell you to eff off all the time'". The Observer. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
4. Dooley, Stacey (17 March 2016). "My father was Irish! The (second) homeland!https://twitter.com/_lalalalalove_/status/710447614874021889 …".
5. "John Boland: Wide-eyed Stacey puts our most acclaimed economists to shame". Independent.ie.
6. Coming Here Soon, 26 June and 3 July 2012
7. "ABC2 Programming Airdate: Stacey Dooley Investigates (episode one)". ABC Television Publicity. 1 October 2010.
8. "BBC Three – Thailand: Tourism and the Truth – Stacey Dooley Investigates". BBC. 1 July 2011. Retrieved 6 November 2012.
9. "BBC Three – Coming Here Soon, Greece, Bust and Broken, Coming Here Soon Trail". BBC. 26 June 2012. Retrieved 6 November 2012.
10. Akins, Chris. "The BBC3 documentary that broke all the rules on reporting suicide". New Statesman. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
11. "BBC series falsely portrays Turkish beggar as Syrian refugee". DailySabah. 22 January 2019. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
12. "BBC Three's Stacey Dooley held by Japanese police". BBC. 26 February 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
13. The Natives: This Is Our America, retrieved 27 October 2018
14. "An Evening with Stacey Dooley | Lyric Theatre, London". Nimax Theatres. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
15. "Stacey Dooley: I owe my MBE to my mum and all the women who inspire me". BBC News. 8 June 2018. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
16. "Stacey Dooley, campaigner and TV presenter". The Observer. 14 January 2012. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
17. "Observer Ethical Awards 2015: judges". The Observer. 25 January 2015. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
18. Frances Taylor (16 August 2018). "Stacey Dooley revealed as eighth Strictly Come Dancing star". Radio Times. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
19. "Stacey Dooley and Kevin Clifton win Strictly Come Dancing 2018". BBC News. BBC. 15 December 2018. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
20. "BBC – Stacey Dooley and Joe Sugg take One Step Beyond the ballroom as they join Madness at this year's New Year's Eve celebrations on BBC One". BBC Media Centre. 18 December 2018. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
21. "BBC Three – Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star, Series 1". BBC. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
22. Warner, Sam. "Strictly Come Dancing's Stacey Dooley announces exciting new TV series". Digital Spy. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
23. Sutton, Megan (31 July 2019). "Lorraine Kelly and Stacey Dooley have landed the dream job on RuPaul's Drag Race UK". Good Housekeeping. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
24. Preskey, Natasha (1 August 2019). "Stacey Dooley meets the bounty hunters: 'Hunting fugitives is like popping a pimple'". BBC Three. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
25. Kampala, Patience Akumu (3 March 2019). "Charity at heart of 'white saviour' row speaks out". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
26. Hinsliff, Gaby (28 February 2019). "'White saviours' belong in the 1980s. Let's keep them there". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
27. correspondent, Mark Brown Arts (24 May 2019). "Stacey Dooley 'would do the same' after Comic Relief row". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
28. Johnson, Jamie (11 June 2019). "Comic Relief will stop sending celebrities abroad in wake of 'white saviour' racism row, Richard Curtis tells MPs". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
29. "BBC apologises over Stacey Dooley Panorama inaccuracy". BT.com. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
30. "Order of the British Empire". London Gazette. 9 June 2018. Retrieved 28 September 2019.
31. "2018 Winners". One World Media. Retrieved 28 September 2019.
32. Dray, Kayleigh (15 January 2019). "Stacey Dooley: Women can like make-up and still be intellectual". Stylist. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
33. Earp, Catherine (29 July 2019). "Strictly Come Dancing winner Stacey Dooley talks about her relationship with "amazing" Kevin Clifton". Digital Spy. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
34. "BBC Three – Stacey Dooley Investigates – Episode guide". BBC. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
35. "BBC Three – Beaten by My Boyfriend". BBC. Archived from the original on 30 March 2017. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
36. "BBC Three – Coming Here Soon – Episode guide". BBC.
37. "BBC Three – Stacey Dooley in the USA, Series 1 – Episode guide". BBC. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
38. "BBC Three – Superstorm USA: Caught on Camera". BBC. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
39. "BBC Three – The Natives: This is Our America". BBC. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
40. "BBC Three – Glow Up: Britain's Next Make Up Star". BBC. Retrieved 5 September 2019.
41. "Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over". UKTV. Retrieved 5 September 2019.

External links

• Stacey Dooley on IMDb