Former Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba has revealed a 30-year struggle with porn addiction, which he says began when he was just nine years old.
The 39-year-old television presenter broke his silence on the issue, stating his primary motivation is to protect and guide his own children, as well as others facing similar challenges.
Speaking on the We Need To Talk podcast with Paul C Brunson, Oduba disclosed: "A year and a half ago I was able to escape an addiction that had dogged me for nearly 30 years."
He pinpointed the start of his porn addiction to childhood: "Nine, that is when my addiction started, when I was introduced to pornography, and I think only after everything that has happened, understanding how much of a thread that had been throughout my life, was I finally able to escape it."
He described it as a destructive force, adding, "I know it had been dogging me, it had been destroying my life from the inside out, but it was the thing from a very early age that I was running to as a response to a trauma."
Oduba recounted the initial exposure, shown to him by a friend’s older brother, as "innocuous." He recalled, "I remember being very intrigued and a feeling of eyes being opened."
While acknowledging addiction wasn't immediate, he noted, "the intrigue set in immediately and it didn’t take long for that intrigue to start running my mind over."
The presenter, known for his time on CBBC’s Newsround from 2008 to 2013 and winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2016 with Joanne Clifton, spoke of the intense pressure to conceal his growing addiction from his family.
He referenced a past incident where a sibling was disciplined for smoking at school, leading to a stern warning from their father about being sent to Nigeria for education if such behaviour recurred.
This created a profound fear for Oduba. He believed it would be "life over as you know it" if his secret was discovered, leading him to become "a master masker, I had to keep it quiet. That is the problem with this form of addiction."
He elaborated on the pervasive shame: "It’s so shameful, we can’t talk about it, because there is a perceived nature to it that is everything that we hate, everything that we despise."
Oduba, who has two children, Roman and Genie, expressed deep concern for the younger generation. He fears "an epidemic of problems for our young people," observing: "We are already seeing it now."
He likened his experience to other addictions, explaining: "Like any addiction, you have to live two lives, the one you’re happy to show up in and the other you return to in order to feel anything, whether it’s sadness or loneliness or depression or rejection or happiness, it becomes a friend."
The isolation was profound: "I knew I had to find a way to hide it and it was very isolating. It was something that I just knew to be me. Just a part of me. Something that I would always go to to feel. If you ever felt worthless, if you ever felt rejected. It was always a thing."
His decision to speak out stems from a desire to guide his children. "I never imagined I would ever share this with anyone…The reason that I felt like I needed to speak about this is because I wanted to be able to guide my own children when it comes to it, when it comes to them seeing stuff that is going to be there," he stated.
He acknowledged that such content is an inevitable part of life, much like "drink, drugs, money," and felt it was crucial to address.
Oduba stressed the urgency of the situation, stating, "I can’t keep quiet about what I went through and escaped only to save my children and see what is happening on a prevalence level…and not speak up about it."
He views it as a significant societal challenge: "This is, I believe, one of the biggest problems we have societally. There is such a prevalence."
He sees his disclosure as a personal sacrifice: "This is me putting my life as it is on the line, to save my children and to guide anybody else’s children going into a world where at their fingertips, they can fall into something they never asked to."
Highlighting the accidental exposure children face, he noted, "When we hear that 60 per cent of children are finding it accidentally, that it is cropping up on iPads, that it’s just so normal." He warned against inaction, suggesting that if the topic remains taboo, children will "start self-educating, because it’s too sensitive to touch. They will start sharing it between themselves."
Oduba concluded by advocating for a shift in public discourse. "I just want us to change the conversation around it more. I really want to give other caregivers and parents the opportunity to lean into the difficult conversation because I think about that traditional idea of sex education, that right now kids are being educated at 14 at school."
Reflecting on his own experience: "In my case, I’d had five years of exposure to a world that nobody is discussing."
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