Stacey Jaclyn DooleyMBE[1] (born 9 March 1987) is an English television presenter, journalist, and media personality. She came to prominence in 2008 as a participant on the documentary series 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.[2]
Stacey Jaclyn Dooley was born on 9 March 1987[4] in Luton, Bedfordshire.[7] Her father was from Ireland and left the family when she was two years old.[8][9] He was an alcoholic who died when Dooley was in her 20s, before they could reconcile.[7] She grew up in Luton and studied at Stopsley High School. She worked as a shop assistant, selling perfumes at Luton Airport. She also worked in a hairdresser's salon in Bramingham.[10] Dooley admitted to going through a short phase of shoplifting with her friends during her youth in Luton.[11] Around that time, she also dated a drug dealer.[12]
Career
2008–2017: Career beginnings and Stacey Dooley Investigates
Dooley first appeared on television in April 2008 when she travelled to India as one of the participants on the documentary television series Blood, Sweat and T-shirts.[13] 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.[14] 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.[15]
Dooley at an event organised by War on Want in 2009 protesting against sweatshops
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.[16] Dooley also presented the CBBC series Show Me What You're Made Of and spin off series Show Me What You're Made Of UK.[17]
Filmed in Dooley's hometown of 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.[18] The programme on Japan was criticised by some because it ignored the Samaritans guidelines on reporting of suicide.[19] 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.[4] In 2015, Dooley created the documentary series Beaten By My Boyfriend where she investigated domestic abuse within the UK.[20]
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.[21]
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.[4]
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.[22]
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 1,200 Indigenous 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.[23]
2018–present
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.[4]
Dooley published her first book in February 2018, Stacey Dooley, On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back. The book has topics concerning sex trafficking, domestic violence, sex equality and child exploitation and became a Sunday Times Bestseller.[4] She also had her own UK book tour, hosted by Viv Groskop.[24]
On 16 August 2018, Dooley was announced as the eighth contestant to take part in the sixteenth series of Strictly Come Dancing.[27] On 15 December 2018, she won the series with her dance partner Kevin Clifton.[28] Following her win, shortly afterwards the BBC announced Dooley as co-presenter of New Year Live on BBC One, with another Strictly 2018 contestant, Joe Sugg.[29] She also took part in BBC One's Children in Need where she explored the number of homeless young people in the UK.[4]
In 2019, Dooley was named as Grazia's new contributing editor for investigations.[4] 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.[30] Dooley then began presenting the BBC Three reality competition series Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star.[31] In July 2019, it was announced that Dooley would be a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race UK.[32] 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.[33]
In 2021, Dooley, with Turi King, presented the BBC programme DNA Family Secrets which helps people solve family mysteries regarding their ancestry, missing relatives and genetic diseases.[35]
In April 2024, it was announced that Dooley would be making her stage debut as Jenny in 2:22 A Ghost Story at the Gielgud Theatre. Her final show was in August of that year.[37]
Since early 2019, Dooley has been in a relationship with her Strictly Come Dancing dance partner Kevin Clifton.[39] In August 2022, Dooley confirmed via Instagram that she was expecting a baby with Clifton.[40] In January 2023, she gave birth to their daughter.[41]
Controversies
Dooley was criticised in January 2019 for falsely portraying a Turkish woman as a Syrian sex worker living in Istanbul in her series Sex in Strange Places. The misrepresentation led to the Turkey episode of the documentary being removed from BBC iPlayer.[42]
Dooley was criticised in February 2019 after she posted photos holding a Ugandan child[43] 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. British MP David Lammy tweeted in response to a news story about Dooley: "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."[44]
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."[45]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."[46] Dooley told The Guardian she had no regrets over the incident.[47] 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.[48]
^Brown, Mark (24 May 2019). "Stacey Dooley 'would do the same' after Comic Relief row". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 13 July 2022. Retrieved 22 September 2022. "The little boy was a sweetheart. We spent time with his granddad. We were there for two and a half days in that village. We asked if we could have a picture. We asked if we could use the picture. I feel content with my behaviour." "I never really had a conversation with David Lammy. He never picked up the phone. He never came to me and said: 'Can I have 20 minutes of your time? I'd love to tell you what my concerns are. I'm a reasonable, rational woman. I would have sat down and listened to what he had to say."
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