The Strictly Come Dancing professional confirmed the death of his dad, David, in an Instagram post on 13 November 2025, one day after the funeral. The post, four sentences long, was more revealing than most carefully prepared statements.
“I thought I knew my dad,” Neil Jones wrote, “but yesterday I realised I didn’t.”
One day after his father’s funeral, the Strictly Come Dancing professional shared those words with 273,000 people on Instagram. No press release. No publicist’s wording. He sat down and wrote it himself.
The post went up on 13 November 2025, alongside a set of black and white photographs of his late father, David. The pictures showed David smiling by the sea, sharing a pint with his son, and a portrait from his younger years. For most people reading it, those images were the first they had seen of any of this.
His caption read:
“Yesterday I said goodbye to my Dad for the final time. I thought I knew my dad but yesterday I realised I didn’t after hearing so many lovely and funny stories from family and his closest friends. I know he would be smiling looking down with a pint in his hand. Thank you Wendy and everyone for making it such a special day. RIP DAD.”
No cause of death has been shared publicly.
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How the Strictly Family Responded to the News
The comments section filled up fast. Professional dancers, former colleagues, and well-known faces from across his career were among the first to respond.
Fleur East, host of It Takes Two, wrote: “Sending you love, Neil! Such a difficult thing to go through. Big hugs.”
Katya Jones, his former wife and long-time Strictly colleague, commented: “Rest in peace, David.” The two separated in August 2019 after six years of marriage and have continued working alongside each other on the show since.
Others who left their words in the comments:
| Name | Message |
|---|---|
| Amy Dowden | “Love you, my friend.” |
| Dianne Buswell | “Jonsey sending you so much love.” |
| Nikita Kuzmin | “Sending you so much love Neil.” |
| Nadiya Bychkova | “So sorry sending all our love.” |
| Karen Hauer | “Sending all our love Neil.” |
| James Jordan | “Mate. I’m so so sorry for your loss, sending love.” |
| Ellie Leach | “Sending lots of love neil.” |
| Kaz Carney | “Sending so much love.” |
| Vicky Pattison | “Sending you so much love babe.” |
James Jordan competed on Strictly as a professional for nine years before leaving the show in 2013. Ellie Leach won the Glitterball trophy in 2023. Kaz Carney, the Lionesses footballer, was competing in the 2025 series at the time.
The Funeral Came Weeks After a Birthday Trip to Disneyland Paris
The timing made an already hard month harder.
Just weeks before the funeral, Neil and his fiancรฉe Chyna Mills had taken their daughter, Havana, to Disneyland Paris for her second birthday. Havana was born on 2 October 2023 and turned two that month. The photos from the trip were sitting on his Instagram when the post about his father went up in November.
What the 2025 Strictly Series Looked Like for Neil Jones
Before November, 2025 had already been an unusual year for him professionally.
Neil was not assigned a celebrity partner for the 2025 Strictly series, despite remaining part of the professional cast. He appeared throughout the series in the show’s group routines alongside Nancy Xu and Luba Mushtuk. His last celebrity pairing before that year had been with Toyah Willcox in 2024, a partnership that ended in week three after losing the dance-off to Paul Merson and Karen Hauer.
He addressed the situation in September, on Instagram, without complaint. He posted a clip of himself attempting to throw a pen into a cup and captioned it: “If I get the pen in the cup I will get a celeb partner this year.” He threw it nowhere near the cup. A follow-up post put his position plainly: “It’s all jokes and giggle and no matter with or without a partner I just love being part of @bbcstrictly so thank you for all your love.”
He Had Already Lost Family During Covid and Could Not Attend That Funeral Either
David’s death in November 2025 was the second significant bereavement Neil had spoken about in a few years.
During the Covid pandemic, he lost his uncle and was prevented by social distancing restrictions from attending the funeral. He described the specific pain of not being able to say a proper goodbye in person, a grief complicated by circumstances he had no control over.
This time, he was there. He sat in the room, heard the stories, and came home to write that he had not known his father as well as he thought. The situations were different. The weight of absence, in different forms, was not.
Neil Jones: The Career and the Life Most People Have Not Seen
For those less familiar with who Neil Jones is away from the Strictly ballroom, the background is worth knowing.
He was born on 4 May 1982 on a British Army base in Mรผnster, West Germany. He started dancing at three years old. His own explanation for how it started: his sister came home from dance class every week with trophies, he got jealous, and he asked to join. He never stopped.
By 16, he had relocated to Finland to train as a competitive dancer and found himself homeless. He slept outside his own rehearsal venue and showered there each morning so no one would find out. He told homelessness charity Centrepoint:
“I found myself actually sleeping just outside of where I was rehearsing and then I’d get changed and take a shower there so that no one would ever know.”
He is now an advocate for both Centrepoint and Shelter.
His competitive career built to 45 dance championship titles, including eight British National titles, eight Dutch National titles, European honours, and four World Latin titles. He joined Strictly Come Dancing as a professional in 2016. His celebrity pairings over the years include Alex Scott in 2019, Nina Wadia in 2021, and Toyah Willcox in 2024.
Away from the show, he and Chyna co-founded Pure Content Studios in Leeds, a creative workspace for content creators that came about after filming equipment overtook their home following Havana’s birth. The couple are engaged, with the wedding on hold until Havana is old enough to walk down the aisle with them.
Earlier in 2025, Neil also created and performed in Gingerland, a dance-theatre production that ran at Lichfield Cathedral in July. It was his second show for the Lichfield Festival, following Somnium: A Dancer’s Dream, which transferred to Sadler’s Wells and was the first Latin and Ballroom production ever staged there.
Five months on from that November post, Neil Jones remains part of the Strictly professional cast.
He went from sleeping outside a rehearsal room in Finland at 16 to a career with 45 titles, a production at Sadler’s Wells, a daughter, and a business he built with his fiancรฉe. And in November 2025, at a point when his life had more in it than ever before, he buried his father and admitted to anyone reading carefully that there were things about David he had only learned the day of the funeral.
That admission sits in the middle of a four-sentence Instagram post, unedited and public: “I thought I knew my dad but yesterday I realised I didn’t.”
His Strictly colleagues filled the comments. The rest of 2025 kept moving. He moved through it too, quietly and without further explanation, which is perhaps the most honest thing he could have done.
