Inside the Strictly love triangle: Truth behind photograph of Maura and Kai

As Maura Higgins stepped on to the red carpet at Monday night’s Pride of Britain Awards, all eyes were on her.

The Love Island star showed off a new bold look styled by celebrity hairdresser Carl Bembridge, who had trimmed her long locks into an elegant bob.

And as she posed in a stunning £972 Dodona Avdiu black gown which flaunted her hard-to-miss embonpoint, it wasn’t just the attention of the paparazzi she attracted.

For I can reveal that later that night, at an exclusive afterparty held in the Red Bar at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, the Irish beauty locked lips with Strictly star Pete Wicks.

A kiss is just a kiss, they say. But this steamy clinch could spell danger for Pete’s future on the Saturday night BBC show – the last thing the scandal-hit programme needs.

Long-haired lothario Pete has also been growing close to his Polish dance partner Jowita Przystal – and she will undoubtedly be hurt by his very public display with Maura.

Friends of Pete tell me that he is ‘playing with fire’ by juggling two women’s affections while appearing on the show.

His exploits are just the latest chapter in Strictly Come Dancing’s long history of love, lust and intrigue.

When Pete, 36, met Jowita, 30, on the show a few weeks ago, producers spotted their ‘instant chemistry’. At last month’s National Television Awards, the two were spotted ‘getting cosy’ – which seemed to confirm the blossoming romance.

Just last week, Pete gushed about Jowita, telling Olivia Attwood’s So Wrong It’s Right podcast: ‘She’s amazing and we get on really well. She is honestly one of the nicest people I have ever met… She’s really positive, she’s really nice, she’s got a very good sense of humour. So when they were coupling up the partners, she’s the person I wanted.’

He added: ‘We do have chemistry because we genuinely get on really well.’

Week after week, fans have heaped praise on Pete and Jowita for their sizzling routines that have lit up the dancefloor, including a passionate rumba to Oasis’s Don’t Look Back In Anger on Saturday.

But after the pair sailed through the Strictly public vote and were then pictured together on the red carpet on Monday, he was seen getting intimate with Maura at the same bash.

Friends say it will be a ‘fresh blow’ for Jowita, who has grown ‘closer and closer’ to the heavily tattooed Pete.

The source added: ‘It is fair to say that Jowita has a special place for Pete in her heart. She is really fond of him. She finds him so funny and they have so much fun together.

‘She is only too aware of the scrutiny they are under each week and hoped that more would come after their time on the show.’

As always with Strictly, it may take two tango – but there is often a third waiting in the wings.

To show just how tangled the web of relationships on the show is, at the same Monday night bash, newly single Strictly dancer Kai Widdrington was also seen making moves on Maura.

Kai’s ex-girlfriend, fellow Strictly pro Nadiya Bychkova, had pointedly told journalists she was ‘not friends’ with her former partner.

Yet Maura is said to have rebuffed the ‘fame-hungry’ Kai’s advances on Monday night, kissing Pete instead.

One onlooker said of the libidinous attendees: ‘It felt like an episode of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals.’

Maura, 33, has been friends with Pete for years after meeting him on the reality TV circuit.

They have repeatedly shot down romance rumours but were seen getting close at the Broadwick Hotel in Soho in August and again last month at The Ship pub in Wandsworth.

Then on Monday, Maura posted a video on TikTok of her in the hunk’s muscled arms, as he displayed an impressive dance move by lifting her off the ground before gazing amorously into her eyes.

‘She’s attractive and so it changes how I look at people,’ Pete said. ‘I think she’s great and we get on very well and we have done for a very long time.’

Pete, who found fame on TV’s The Only Way Is Essex, is not the first man to find himself caught between Maura and Jowita.

Giovanni Pernice, Strictly’s former resident heartthrob, dated Maura in 2021 and reportedly broke her heart before starting to see Jowita less than a year later.

In his memoirs released earlier this year, Pete revealed that people have called him ‘the arrogant lothario. The grumpy git. The bad boy.’

He added: ‘To be honest, most of that is true.’

Now friends fear that his ‘love of female attention’ is going to get him in trouble.

One insider tells me: ‘Pete has always had commitment issues, but he needs to tread very carefully. He might see it as all a bit of fun, but when you are on one of the biggest shows on television it can quickly backfire. He is playing with fire.’

At this Saturday’s Strictly Halloween Special, Pete and Jowita will be appearing as The Joker and Harley Quinn – two tempestuous lovers from the DC Comics franchise.

If this week’s antics are anything to go by, it will be perfect casting.