Chapter 1: What surprising items does Janette Manrara bring to the podcast?
This is Sort Your Life Out Unpacked with me, Dilly Carter. Every episode, a celebrity guest will hand over three boxes, each containing an item from their own home. We'll unbox them together and hear plenty of memories and stories too. Along the way, there'll be simple tips to help you sort your own life out. My guest this episode grew up surrounded by Cuban culture and music.
And though she studied finance, her career went in a very different direction. She's now a triple threat, a dancer, a TV presenter and a mum. In fact, she was a beloved pro on Strictly Come Dancing for eight series and now hosts It Takes Two. Recently, she moved back down south to London, which she says feels like home. It's the multi-talented Jeanette Manrara.
Welcome. Wow. Can I just use that intro everywhere I go in the morning when I wake up and walk into the room?
We can print it off and put it on your mirror. And I love that triple threat. Triple threat you are.
Dancer, presenter and mother.
Yes. Yeah. And you've just moved to London.
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Chapter 2: Why does Janette love adding bananas to her meals?
Tell me, are you still living out of boxes or are you super organised?
Well, I am no longer in boxes. This month is a year that we've been living in the house. Okay. And one box.
Only one box left. One box left after one year. That's not bad going. That's not bad going. And did you declutter before you moved?
Chapter 3: How did Janette transition from finance to dance?
Were you very good at that? Are you someone that's quite ordered?
No, I'm pretty organized in general. And I like feeling fresh. I like feeling like getting rid of the old and in with fresh and new. It's hard to do that with my husband because he's the opposite. Okay. And with a toddler in the house. And she's growing so fast. So her clothing, specifically, and toys, she's changing so quickly. And I'm not keeping up with it as fast as I possibly can.
And how are you with keeping her stuff? Are you someone that's keeping everything just in case? Or are you keeping things... No.
You let go? I'm letting it go. I'm keeping, like... The little things like, for example, the first dress she ever wore.
They're important. Memory items.
Memory items. And I found this amazing company, I need to do it, where you can send them your baby's clothes and they do a whole teddy bear or a pillow or something made out of those special fabrics.
We've done that a lot on the show. It's a lovely way to keep hold of memories is to turn them into a pillow, turn them into a teddy. Exactly. So I'm hoping to do the same with some of her clothes. Oh, that's a nice idea.
Yeah. Oh, so you're good.
This is nice.
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Chapter 4: What memories do Janette's dance shoes hold for her?
I'm giving it, I'm not Stacey.
No.
She's iconic, but I'm doing my best in my own little way. Yeah.
They do and make something out of anything. Absolutely anything. Before we go through your boxes, I'm going to ask you a few quickfire home truths. Okay. How would you describe your home in a sentence?
Warm and fun. Warm and fun. I love the idea of that.
I can imagine that. Warm and fun. Okay, if I turned up unannounced, what room would you ban me from entering?
Oh, easy, our wardrobe.
Wardrobe.
Our wardrobe.
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Chapter 5: What significance does Janette's great-grandmother's pendant have?
Did you know what we were going to bring? No. Oh, yay. I don't know what you're bringing. That's how, you know, I want to be surprised. Okay, good. You know, and I think it's more exciting. And then it feels like Christmas for me. And so then I'm like, okay. So in Jeanette's box is a banana. Oh, my goodness. So tell me why I've got a banana in my hand, Jeanette.
Actually, in fact, I think we have a voice note about the first item. So can we play that? Go on.
Hello, I'm Eliash, Jeanette's worst half. I am so excited that Jeanette is doing Set Your Life Out podcast because I do have a little bone to pick, which is bananas. Jeanette likes to have bananas with literally everything, a soup, Pasta, salad, obviously in a dessert. That's probably the only way that I would put it. But yeah, why? Huichka, why?
Why?
Have a good one.
Why? What a nice little voice note. Why? We all want to know why.
Yeah, so long story short, I'm Cuban. And in Cuban cuisine, it's a very, very popular side dish to have. It's fried plantains.
Yeah.
And if we didn't have the fried plantains, my mom would just give me a banana. And then that ended up happening with every meal. So she'd give me, I don't know, and it started from baby, baby. She'd give me baby food and then follow it up with a baby banana puree food. And so I kind of just developed a taste bud for it through the years.
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Chapter 6: How does Janette manage organization with a toddler at home?
It's an acquired taste, I will say.
It could be the new Heston. You could be creating something that no one knows about. There's a lot going on with the banana. Well, actually, interestingly enough, I was brought up in an orphanage for the first three years of my life. And I ate so many bananas that in the orphanage, they used to call me kesel, which in Sri Lankan is banana. Is banana. So the Sri Lankan word for banana is kesel.
And that's what they used to call me. Kesel girl. Look at that. Because I used to love a banana. And I also have bananas for breakfast every day on my porridge chopped up. Do you see? I don't have them with my spaghetti or my pasta. No. But I do have them on my porridge. So I also love a banana.
I mean, I want to say give it a go, but I have a feeling you're definitely not going to like it. It's just because I grew up with it.
So tell me about your Cuban heritage and, you know, what that's meant to you growing up and how much of it you still is instilled in your everyday life.
I feel, I mean, I was born in Miami, so technically I'm American, but I'm first born of my Cuban family. And my whole family's Cuban, literally grandparents, aunts and uncles, obviously mom and dad, everybody's Cuban. And I was raised learning Spanish first, so I spoke Spanish before I learned English. I learned English at school. I grew up listening to all the...
popular Cuban music and dancing and music was always part of our family in the house. We just, any reason to have a party, any reason to get together and dance. It was tough because they were an immigrant family. So I shared at one point a room with my mom and my dad and my brother, the four of us in one bedroom in my grandparents' house. So it wasn't like an apartment. It was literally a room.
So all of you together. Yeah.
Yeah. It was tough financially for us growing up. I remember I had like one pair of shoes for years and I kept like trying to figure out ways to extend them because my feet were starting to get cramped at the front. Or same pair of jeans for a long time and my mom would just extend the bottom until she couldn't anymore. Yeah.
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Chapter 7: What lessons has Janette learned from her upbringing?
Do you have bananas on a side plate? All the time, already.
Yeah, already.
Actually, this is a funny story. When I first met Aliash's parents when we first started dating, he told his mother, Mom, she loves a banana with everything.
Okay.
And on the first dinner that we had in his parents' house, I died laughing. And I was trying to be so respectful because I'm meeting his mom for the first time. But I walked into the dining room and I knew exactly where I was sat because there was a banana right next to my plate. And they put it on there for you. And he's like, I told her that you love a banana.
So she just had it ready for you so that when you eat your food, you can have your banana on the side.
Shall we have a look at your second item? Yes. So this is a bigger box. Let's see. What's going to be in here? Is it going to be another type of... Oh, okay. This is very different to a banana. This is an incredible pair, a very sparkly banana. Boots. They're nude. They're slip-on. They've got a peep toe and they've got these beautiful diamantes up the front and down the back of them.
Now, I can only imagine that these are a pair of shoes from Strictly. Yes. These are stunning. These are 35. So you're two. I'm a two. Oh, my gosh. So I'm a three and a half, four. But you are teeny tiny. A shoe size. Shopping is not fun for me, I'll be honest. But we get all the good sales. We do get good sales. That's a bonus. So these shoes are, they're like a little booty.
Let's say they're like an ankle boot. They're very comfortable.
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Chapter 8: How does Janette's heritage influence her daily life?
Something's changing. And then to get to the final with Harvey and do that dance and wear these shoes, it was just kind of such a special, special moment for me. How did it feel doing your last dance at Strictly? I cried my eyes out.
I didn't know.
It didn't even matter that we didn't win. It wasn't about winning. I was just so happy to be in a final because I had never got that chance to get that far in the series. And I remember looking over at all the professionals because it was so strange. It was a tough season for everyone because Aliash and I had to bubble with our partners. So I didn't see Aliash for 12 weeks. Wow, okay.
But I would see him every Friday and Saturday in the studio. Yeah. But I couldn't hug him. I couldn't touch him. I almost would have rather not seen him at all. Yeah. It would have been easier. But being in the studio near him and not being able to hug him was really tough.
Yeah.
So when we got to this final, everyone was emotional. Yeah. Because we got through to the end of the series. Yeah, of course. I looked over at Aliash and he was crying his eyes out. Yeah. So it was a very happy, emotional night. And then you add this really bizarre, strange feeling that I felt in my heart. It was going to be my last one. So, yeah, there were a lot of tears, a lot of tears.
I mean, your career has gone from strength to strength, you know, from being a dancer. I mean, you started off, you were on a Spanish TV show, weren't you?
Yeah, I started on a show. It's called Sábado Gigante, which means in Spanish.
Oh, I love the sound of you speaking Spanish.
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