Ed Balls has admitted that the main reason his wife, Yvette Cooper, wants him to stay in Strictly Come Dancing longer is so that he can lose more weight.
The Norwich City chairman has so far lost more than three quarters of a stone thanks to the gruelling training sessions with his partner Katya Jones.
But according to Mrs Cooper, MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, he still has a few more pounds to shed.
'It's the main reason Yvette thinks I need to stay in the competition because I think she thinks I have got quite a lot of weight to lose, he said.
'I've certainly lost three quarters of a stone and in the first few weeks lost it quite quickly, it slowed down a bit but that tends to happen with weight loss.
'But for the first time in quite a long time I'm eating what I like and it is not making any difference when it comes to losing the weight.'
And some of that weight loss is down to his strict Russian partner who has been stopping him eating crisps and drinking beer.
It may only be her first year as a pro-dancer on the show but Mrs Jones is already proving herself to be a tough taskmaster in the training rooms and Mr Balls admitted that sometimes she shouts at him in her mother tongue.
He said: 'Katya speaks to me often in Russian but normally in quite a scathing way and she then refuses to tell me what the words were.
'So while I hear a lot of Russian and I can guess what she is saying she very deliberately doesn't translate as I am almost sure it would not be suitable for a pre-watershed show.'
The former shadow chancellor survived the dance off yet again at the weekend despite receiving the lowest score of the series for his paso doble, scoring just 16 points for the routine.
The dance started with the 49-year-old, who was dressed as a knight, rescuing Mrs Jones from a fire breathing dragon but the routine was full of mistakes.
Len Goodman told him: 'I don't know about holding out for a hero, I was holding out for a paso.'
And Craig Revel Horwood, who scored him just two points, complained: 'The shaping was terrible, it was stompy, there wasn't a hint of any matador in there, darling.'
Speaking about the dance on Victoria Derbyshire this morning he said: 'It was utterly appalling – I totally messed it up. I got the step wrong and we lost it.'
But he added that he has so far exceeded all of his expectations on the show and just wants to learn and get better.
'I surpassed my expectations, I wanted to get through the first week, I didn't want to go out on the first public vote and I've now got through three,' he said. 'On the one hand I'm probably the worst dancer but that's no surprise but people are enjoying it and they can see that we're trying hard, trying to do better and Strictly is all about trying to learn and to improve.
'I've got a great partner in Katya and we're just trying to give it a go and every week is a bonus now.'
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