The Australian photographer encouraged the Channel 4 News presenter to step out of his comfort zone in 2023, and he says the show changed his life.
Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy turned down Strictly Come Dancing for years. When he finally signed up in 2023, it was his wife, Lisa, who had talked him round.
Lisa Guru-Murthy is an Australian photographer from Melbourne. She and Krishnan married in 2005, and they have two children, Jasmine and Jay.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| From | Melbourne, Australia |
| Work | Photographer, under her maiden name, Lisa Colles |
| Husband | Krishnan Guru-Murthy, lead presenter of Channel 4 News |
| Met | May 2003, introduced by Krishnan’s friend and bandmate Tim Hincks |
| Married | February 2005 |
| Children | Jasmine and Jay |
| Home | Kew, south-west London, since around 2008 |
Table of Contents
Her running and his 53rd birthday
On his 53rd birthday, in April 2023, Krishnan decided something had to change. He weighed close to 15 stone, and he later told MailOnline that he could no longer be what he called “overweight and unattractive”.
Lisa was already well ahead of him. She was running ten miles every other day and had joined a rowing club, and he admitted he felt he was being left behind.
“In a way, I have been trying to keep up with her,” he said. The pressure came from him, he was careful to add. “My wife has never talked in those terms but she has always talked about me being healthy.”
His theory was that men his age were following their wives’ lead. “Men are being led by women; women did it first,” he said.
Why he finally said yes
The BBC had asked him before, and he had always said no. “Something changed this year,” he said after signing up. Shortly before the series began, he gave his reasoning: “What if I kept saying no? It might not be physically possible for me to do it now, that remains to be seen. But it certainly won’t be possible in five years.”
He also has a genetic heart condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which meant keeping his heart rate down in every routine. Lisa backed him all the way and encouraged him to get out of his comfort zone.
Jasmine was keen to join her mother in the audience for the launch show. Jay, then 16, wanted no part of it. When his father mentioned that the contract still wasn’t signed, Jay saw a way out: “You haven’t signed your contract, so you don’t have to do it? Please don’t do it.”
Krishnan signed. Jay watched the first live show, came home at 11pm and asked if he could go to the studio the following week.
By the time Krishnan went out in week eight, his son, who played in a band of his own, had learned to love Strictly almost as much as his father. In his farewell post, he wrote:
“My beautiful wife Lisa supported me perfectly throughout, after being the first person to convince me to do the show.”
Lisa had form. In 2009 Krishnan tweeted that he had just had his first music lesson in 21 years, because “my wife is sick of my bad guitar playing so got me lessons”.
How did Krishnan Guru-Murthy meet his wife?
“Tim worked with me on a show and introduced me to Lisa, who worked with his wife, Pippa,” Krishnan wrote in a 2006 Guardian column. Tim Hincks, a television executive, also played in a band with him.
Their first meeting was in May 2003, at Hakkasan on Hanway Place in central London. Nine years later to the night, Krishnan tweeted that they were going out with the friends who had introduced them.
They married on a Sunday in February 2005. Speaking to The Observer in 2020, he described the day as “a real mixture of Indian and British culture”. Lisa wore a blue sari, and Krishnan played a few rock’n’roll songs with friends.
“I sang and played bass, on the grounds that I was the worst guitarist of the three of us,” he said. “Let’s just say the crowd was on our side.”
For their 14th anniversary in 2019, he shared a photo from the wedding on Instagram with the caption: “I can’t believe it’s 14 years! I’m very lucky.”
An Australian in England
Lisa works as a photographer under her maiden name, Lisa Colles. Her Instagram bio reads “Photographer // Australian in England // Prints available”, and her feed is full of river scenes and old buildings.
When Krishnan wished her a happy birthday on Instagram in January 2024, he called her an “amazing woman, jeweller, photographer, mother and partner”.
He has been joking about his Australian wife online for more than a decade. During the Women’s World Cup in August 2023, he rang her and was told she was “just watching the football”.
“That’s never happened before,” he tweeted. “But she’s an aussie.”
Still missing the dance floor
Strictly returned to BBC One for its 2026 series on 19 September, three years after Krishnan’s run. He went back to the show for Halloween night last year, and wrote afterwards that it was “so nice to go and remember that Strictly feeling”.
In January this year he told Prospect magazine that Strictly had reconnected him with a side of himself he had long forgotten, though the feeling fades with time. “I really wish I was still dancing, but I’m not,” he said.
Weekly dance classes don’t appeal after the intensity of the show, he explained. He has thought about a salsa and tango holiday in South America, which he called his version of “the kind of Ayurvedic and yoga holidays my wife goes on”.
