My disagreeable encounter with Ben Cohen and Kristina throughout scandal

Dressed in a fabulous ballgown, Kristina Rihanoff looked stunning as she hosted a glitzy party at a Mayfair hotel with her Strictly Come Dancing partner Ben Cohen beside her.

She was revelling in the moment as she handed out pricey cocktails to friends and members of her PR team. They had helped with a gala event earlier that evening for her children’s charity The Dot Com Foundation at the prestigious Mansion House in the City of London.

The ‘after-gala’ party was a no-expense-spared affair. The drink flowed until the early hours as did the lively conversation among her celebrity friends, including Emmerdale actress Lisa Riley.

The venue was the same rooftop room at the Sanctum Hotel where, incidentally, I had met Meghan Markle just a year earlier. The intimate venue was not cheap and the bill would have been significant.

The year was 2014 and Kristina, who was still appearing on Strictly back then, had booked herself a suite at the hotel for which she wouldn’t have got much change out of £1,000 a night.

Intriguingly, Ben – who was married at the time to his now ex-wife Abby – was at her side despite both of them insisting publicly they were not in a relationship. They looked extremely pleased with themselves, perhaps because they secretly knew that the following day Ben would release a statement to say he had split from Abby, the mother of his two daughters.

It was ten years ago that Kristina’s big night took place – and it turned out to be a memorable night for me, too, courtesy of an encounter with Ben, as I shall explain.

And what a difference a decade makes. Because today things look very different for the couple who began their romance after they were paired together on Strictly back in 2013. Few have become more synonymous with the infamous Curse of Strictly, the cause of so many tears, tantrums, broken marriages and unfulfilled dreams.

On Friday, Northampton Crown Court heard how Kristina and her ex-rugby player fiance are ‘fighting not to lose everything’ to crippling debts. She described in court how they are attempting to ‘save’ their relationship amid financial trouble.

Kristina was trying (unsuccessfully) to appeal against a driving ban after being caught behind the wheel of her £30,000 Audi Q3 in April without insurance, for which she had been given six points on her licence in June and ordered to pay almost £900 in fines and costs.

The extraordinary story of her romantic and financial struggles came tumbling out as the couple desperately argued that Kristina should be allowed to keep her licence, which she stood to lose because she had already totted up six penalty points.

Ben appeared as a witness for the Russian-born dancer, 46, who is now a yoga instructor. He told the court the couple had set up several businesses – including a yoga studio – which had suffered loss of custom during the pandemic.

In an emotional statement, the ex-England winger, 45, said: ‘I get up every day and I fight not to lose everything – my cars and my house and my relationship.’

Questioned about the strains on their relationship, Ben added: ‘We’re still living together. We’re in it financially. We’re in business together so the problem is that we opened the business before Covid and we got the worst severities of it.

‘In all honesty, this is just another problem for me to deal with. I’ve got credit cards that are overdrawn. I’m overdrawn in both bank accounts. We have got a business debt because of Covid. It’s just another problem.’

Kristina, always known as a no-nonsense member of the Strictly line-up, sobbed throughout the hearing and had to leave the courtroom at one point with her hands over her mouth because she ‘felt sick’.

She spent the rest of the hearing wrapped in a white blanket holding a tissue to her eyes.

Yet few, I imagine, will be queuing up to offer the pair much in the way of sympathy.

The truth is it seemed they became very arrogant indeed as a result of the touch of celebrity status and money they had back in the day. This was all-too evident in my chance encounter with Ben and Kristina at the Sanctum Hotel that night.

I was staying there for a couple of nights before I moved to Los Angeles for work.

It just so happened that days earlier I had written a story about Kristina and Ben after they had been pictured on a London Tube train in June 2014 – six months after their run on Strictly Come Dancing ended.

For weeks the rumours of their affair had been growing but they had insisted they were not dating, instructing their publicists to tell newspapers any suggestions to that effect were wrong.

However, photographs of the pair told a different story. They showed them cosying up together on the Tube at 9pm after Kristina had attended a function at the House of Commons. Fellow passengers saw Ben slip his arm around the Russian dancer as they chatted away.

There was little they could do about the pictures. But when I found myself in that hotel bar with the couple that night, Ben clearly felt there was something he could do about me.

I was already in the room having a drink with friends when

Kristina’s party arrived – I had chosen to stay at the hotel because its owner Mark Fuller is a friend.

A member of Kristina’s party pointed me out to Ben who came over, asked to have a word and led me away, protesting about the article.

In a dark corner, out of eyeshot of anyone else at the party, he shouted at me and told me that I had ‘upset his children and ruined their lives’. He then told me he was going to get me kicked out of the hotel. I explained to him that I was a guest, but he didn’t care.

He and Kristina – presumably taking advantage of their 15 minutes of fame – asked the owner Mark Fuller to make me leave.

Mark, a mainstay of the Mayfair nightclub scene, was beside himself and told me he feared they wouldn’t pay the bill for their lavish party if I didn’t.

So he suggested that my friends and I should go off to my room with a bottle of champagne, something I readily agreed to. I didn’t want him to lose thousands of pounds.

Later my then boss complained to the BBC, which hauled Kristina in to read her the riot act over her behaviour.

She left the show as a professional dancer three years later. Some of her bosses were said to be relieved. She had, after all, already been embroiled in another Strictly controversy when she began dating her 2009 partner, boxer Joe Calzaghe, despite him being in a five-year relationship with glamour model Jo-Emma Larvin at the time.

As for Kristina’s romance with Ben, the day after my encounter with him, Ben released a statement admitting that his 11-year marriage to loyal Abby was over.

The announcement, which I saw when I touched down in LA, read: ‘Ben and Abby Cohen have agreed to take time apart to deal with some marital issues but remain fully committed to the welfare of their children.

‘There is no third party involved, and Ben and Abby now ask that their privacy and that of their family be respected at this difficult time.’

He and Kristina went on to have a baby, a little girl named Milena, who is now eight. They also had a lucrative deal with Hello! Magazine which charted milestone events in their lives, such as their engagement in 2022.

Since then though, the pair have disappeared into showbiz oblivion.

I wonder if they recall that night at the Sanctum Hotel as vividly as I do. Or perhaps they were just too drunk on fame?