Dianne Buswell tearfully said goodbye to her parents after a six-week stay in Brighton, as Mark and Rina headed back to their home in Australia following an extended visit with the family’s baby son, Bowden.
The visit had been built around time with the child, who was born in March, and Buswell said her mother had become especially close to him. She said Bowden loved his cuddles with Nanny, and joked that sometimes her mother was the only person who could calm him. Buswell also said she was free the whole time, making the stretch with her parents even more special.
The family time covered some of the biggest dates in Buswell’s recent life, including her 37th birthday and her first Mother’s Day. It also unfolded at the £3.5m Brighton home she shares with Joe Sugg, where the couple have settled into life with their first child after years in the public eye together.
Buswell and Sugg began their relationship after being paired on Strictly’s 16th series in 2018, when they danced their way into the final. Their strongest result in the competition came in week nine with a Quickstep to Dancing Fool, which earned 38 points from the judges, before they later scored a near-perfect 40 in the final. Stacey Dooley and Kevin Clifton won that series instead, but Sugg later wrote on Instagram that he may not have won the glitterball, but he had won something a million times more special.
That is the thread running through this farewell too. The couple’s life has shifted from televised competition to family routine, and for Buswell, the ache in saying goodbye to her parents now comes from the same place as the joy of having them there: Bowden, and the life they are building around him. A recent update on the baby appeared to capture the same home-centred mood, with Buswell sharing an emotional moment that reflected how much the child has changed the rhythm of their days.
With Mark and Rina now on the journey back to Australia, the short answer to what matters next is simple: Buswell has gone back to being a mother without the extra hands she had for six weeks, and she has already made clear that Bowden will miss the comfort of Nanny most of all.
