Stacey Dooley


Anastacia Jaclyn Dooley , commonly known as Stacey Dooley, is an English television presenter, journalist, documentary film-maker, 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.
Dooley was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire 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 .

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. 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.

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. 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. 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. The programme on Japan was criticised by some because it ignored the Samaritans guidelines on reporting of suicide. 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. 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.
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.
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.

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.
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. The book became a Sunday Times Bestseller. She also had her own UK book tour, hosted by Viv Groskop.
Dooley was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting. In 2012, and again in 2015, Dooley was a member of the judging panel for The Observer Ethical Awards.
On 16 August 2018, Dooley was announced as the eighth contestant to take part in the sixteenth series of Strictly Come Dancing; on 15 December 2018, she was announced as the winner of the series alongside dance partner Kevin Clifton. 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. She also took part in BBC One's Children in Need where she explored the number of homeless young people in the UK.
In 2019, Dooley was announced as Grazia's new contributing editor for Investigations. 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. Dooley then began presenting the BBC Three reality competition series . In July 2019, it was announced that Dooley would appear as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race UK. 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.

Honours and awards

Dooley was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.
In 2018, the programme Stacey Dooley: Face To Face With ISIS received the Popular Features Award at the One World Media Awards.

Personal life

Dooley considers herself a feminist and has made documentaries regarding gender equality. Since early 2019, Dooley has been in a relationship with Strictly Come Dancing pro Kevin Clifton., whom she was partnered with on the show.

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.
Dooley was further criticised in February 2019 after she posted photos holding an 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. 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." 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." 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." Dooley told The Guardian she had no regrets over the incident and she would do the same again. 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.
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 confirmed that this clip had been removed from the documentary, while the teaser clip had been edited.

Filmography

Tours