Stacey Dooley

Stacey Jaclyn Dooley MBE (born 9 March 1987) is an English television presenter, journalist, and media personality. She came to prominence in 2008 as a participant on the documentary series Blood, Sweat and T-shirts. Since then, she has made social-issue-themed television documentaries for BBC Three concerning child labour and women in developing countries.

In 2018, Dooley published her debut book, On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back, which became a Sunday Times Bestseller. That same year, she won the sixteenth series of the BBC One dancing competition show Strictly Come Dancing with her professional dance partner and now boyfriend Kevin Clifton. From 2019 to 2020, she presented the BBC Three reality show Glow Up: Britain's Next Make-Up Star. In 2024, Dooley made her stage debut in the West End play 2:22 A Ghost Story.

Dooley was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting.

Stacey Jaclyn Dooley was born on 9 March 1987 in Luton, Bedfordshire. Her father was from Ireland and left the family when she was two years old. He was an alcoholic who died when Dooley was in her 20s, before they could reconcile. She grew up in Luton and studied at Stopsley High School. She worked as a shop assistant, selling perfumes at Luton Airport. She also worked in a hair salon in Bramingham. Dooley admitted to going through a short phase of shoplifting with her friends during her youth in Luton. Around that time, she also dated a drug dealer.

Dooley first appeared on television in April 2008 when she travelled to India as one of the participants on the documentary television series Blood, Sweat and T-shirts. Dooley and the other participants were selected to illustrate the typical fashion-obsessed consumer. Thanks to her appearance on the show, and partly because of her interest in labour laws in developing countries, a series was commissioned with Dooley as presenter. Stacey Dooley Investigates began in August 2009 and a two-part special was shown on BBC Three throughout August and September 2009. It also aired in Australia on ABC2 from 2 June 2010. In October 2010, BBC Three aired two further programmes, the first on former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the second on sex trafficking and underage sex slavery in Cambodia. In 2011, BBC Three aired Tourism and the Truth: Stacey Dooley Investigates. Over two episodes, Dooley investigated how tourism in Thailand and Kenya affects employees there, in particular with regard to wages, corruption and environmental changes. Dooley also presented the CBBC series Show Me What You're Made Of and spin off series Show Me What You're Made Of UK.

Filmed in Dooley's hometown of Luton, My Hometown Fanatics was broadcast on BBC Three on 20 February 2012. In the programme, Dooley interviewed Islamists and the English Defence League. A three-part series titled Coming Here Soon was broadcast on BBC Three in June and July 2012, in which Dooley explored the lives of young people in three countries affected by the 2008 financial crisis: Greece, Ireland and Japan. The programme on Japan was criticised by some because it ignored the Samaritans guidelines on reporting of suicide. While Dooley was in the United States in 2012, she created two series of Stacey Dooley in the USA where she investigated issues affecting teens across America such as: Girls Behind Bars, Border Wars, Homelessness and Kids in the Crossfire. In 2015, Dooley created the documentary series Beaten By My Boyfriend where she investigated domestic abuse within the UK.

In 2016, Dooley presented Stacey Dooley in Cologne: The Blame Game, about the 2015 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, which aired on 29 January. She also presented Stacey Dooley: Hate and Pride in Orlando where she travelled to Orlando, Florida in the aftermath of the Pulse Bar shootings. On 30 July, Dooley appeared on the BBC's Celebrity Mastermind where her specialist subject was the television series Girls.

In November 2016, Dooley appeared in a BBC Three series Brainwashing Stacey, where she went to a US anti-abortion summer camp and then to some African big-game hunters. Stacey also made a documentary Sex in Strange Places for which she travelled to Turkey, Brazil and Russia to explore people's different attitudes towards sex and prostitution.