What with rumours of a Strictly Come Dancing curse and professional dancers hooking up behind the scenes, it’s no surprise there might be some fresh gossip on the set of the new series.

But new addition to the pro-dancing line-up Chloe Hewitt has denied that she and fellow newbie AJ Pritchard are anything more than friends.

Strictly Come Dancing 2016
AJ Pritchard with celebrity contestant Claudia Fragapane (Guy Levy/BBC/PA)

The young twosome, who are both 21, have been dancing together for the last 10 years.

Chloe said: “Everyone always thinks we are together.”

She added, to The Sun: “We have huge respect for each other and we’d never like to affect what we already have.”

Chloe is currently on stand-by as a dancer on her first series of the show, while her close friend and colleague AJ has been paired with gymnast Claudia Fragapane.

Strictly Come Dancing
Katya Jones, Neil Jones and Chloe Hewitt are new additions to Strictly this year (Rick Findler/PA)

The dancers auditioned for the seventh series of Britain’s Got Talent back in 2013 and they did pretty well, reaching the semi-finals.

They were announced as newcomers to Strictly earlier this year, along with Katya and Neil Jones, Gorka Marquez and Oksana Platero.