‘The dancers want to protect Strictly – it’s their livelihood!’ DOLLY BUSBY reveals the BBC’s sinister code of silence after Wynne Evans’ DISGUSTING sexist remark – and what it means for the show

It’s about as crude and offensive a suggestion as you can make.

So, when I heard Strictly star and opera singer Wynne Evans use the vile term ‘spitroast’ – conjuring up a sordid vision of three-way sex with his popular BBC colleague Janette Manrara – I naturally thought she would be furious.

She was standing just a few yards away, after all. And Evans’s disgusting outburst came while they were on professional duty with their assembled co-stars at the launch of this year’s Strictly tour.

I was outraged. There could be no doubt about what he’d said. Evans was 20 yards from where I was standing, but I heard his words quite clearly. And they sent shockwaves through me.

I’m not the only one, of course. Amid general revulsion following my exposure of Evans’s disgraceful slur in The Mail on Sunday, the star is now ‘taking time off’ from his breakfast show on BBC Radio Wales.

But what about his fellow professionals? Aren’t they angry, too?

Why are both Janette and Evans’s former dance partner Katya Jones – two non-nonsense, long serving Strictly stars – refusing to condemn him? 

We have seen no action from the BBC, an organisation supposedly dedicated to the preservation of wholesome values. The best it could do was a statement from BBC Studios saying: ‘We were not previously aware of the mark and did not receive any complaints.

‘We have made it very clear to Wynne that we do not tolerate such behaviour on the tour.’ 

Without, of course, accepting that such behaviour actually took place. 

We don’t even know if Evans stepped back from his breakfast show voluntarily or was ordered to do so by the bosses – because they won’t say.

As for 41-year-old Janette, the chief victim in all this, I understand her silence as a woman forced to choose between personal hurt and professional duty.

But in those brief moments after Evans’s remarks, the attitudes on view were telling.

Certainly, there were looks of concern from her fellow dancers as Evans’s words rang round the largely empty auditorium.

Actor Jamie Borthwick, 30, to whom the comment was made – and who had previously been laughing at Evans’s jokes – jerked his head back with a semi-grimace.

But in the next beat, a member of camera crew shouted: ‘And smiles.’

Sequined chests were puffed out, brilliant white teeth were bared. All had been forgotten and Evans’s offensive, sexist comment with all its repercussions had been lost amid the flashes of the cameras trained upon them.

The show must go on.

I can reveal that, while Janette, Kayta and the rest of the troupe remained unsettlingly silent, Strictly head judge Shirley Ballas went further and actually leapt to Evans’s defence.

Speaking to the Strictly audience at the Glasgow Hydro show on Sunday night, she showered him with compliments.

‘I tell you, Wynne has got the nicest cuddles,’ she announced.

‘C’mon Wynne let’s have a snuggle-bunny cuddle. I just love you so much. He is the nicest man I think I’ve ever met in my entire life.’

Katya, Evans’s dance partner in the last Strictly series, has also come to his aid with a social media video showing the singer at the piano, entertaining the Strictly gang in the lobby of their five-star hotel in Glasgow.

The message was clear: Katya is backing Evans.

Why, you might ask? The answer, I’m afraid, is troubling.

Show insiders have told me of an ‘Omerta’ among the dancers – a sinister code of silence effectively laid down by the BBC itself.

A source said: ‘They [the dancers] know Strictly is bigger than them and want to protect Strictly. It is their livelihoods.

‘And it’s not exactly good news for them when this stuff comes out – so it’s better to keep it happy and clappy.

‘There’s also a sense of loyalty because of all the show has done for them. It’s easier to push on.’

Certainly, it came as no surprise on Saturday when an email from Janette’s representative arrived with a short statement claiming that she was ‘unaware’ of any sordid comments.

What then of the reaction from Janette’s husband Aljaž Škorjanec, who immediately turned to his wife and asked if she was OK?

I am certainly not calling Janette a liar. She is entitled to tell her side of the story in the way that she chooses.

Yet the episode was caught on my camera phone. And, for me, the only explanation as to why these strong, talented women are protecting a man who has embarrassed and demeaned a female colleague in her place of work can be summed up in that single word: Omerta.

Instead, it was left to Lorraine Kelly to speak out against Evans on her ITV show, describing it as ‘really not on’.

‘Do better, mate,’ she said. And quite right, too.

Just four months ago, Katya was at the centre of another Evans-related episode, dubbed ‘grope-gate’, when she was seen pushing his hand away – a hand snaking around her stomach – during the live Strictly Come Dancing broadcast.

But then, too, Katya defended her co-star, describing his wandering hand as a ‘silly joke’.

So far, so familiar.

That episode nearly cost both Jones and Evans their places on Strictly – and the ‘spitroast’ saga seems rather more serious.

But from the dancers and the BBC itself, however, I’m expecting nothing more than silence.

That’s the way they like it, after all.