by Len Goodman
First we were shown how to hold our partner – the five points of contact for the perfect ballroom hold. Maybe it was just me, but I got very confused because it was two ladies showing us. Which lady was the man and which was the lady? Eventually I got the gist of the grip and the ladies came around adjusting our arms and our body positions. As I was determined not to enjoy the evening I did everything in my power to appear to be the most uncoordinated person in the world in the hope that Linda would give up after just one week. Having grasped the hold, at least partially, we were taught some steps, starting with the waltz.
'Left foot forward, side and close, right foot forward, side and close,' Miss Tolhurst called out.
This was simple, even for someone wearing a slipper and a shoe, as we all moved around the floor like a chain of elephants one behind the other.
'Come on now, young man,' I heard Miss Tolhurst saying. I realised that she must be talking to me. 'You need to stand closer to your partner. Body contact is one of the most important elements of dancing properly.'
Keeping my distance from Linda was nothing to do with my feelings towards her: actually I quite liked her. I was just frightened of having my foot stood on by her elegant four-inch stiletto heels. Pauline came over to where we were dancing and as she looked down at my foot encased in Dad's slipper a look of horror crept over her face.
'Look, I'll show you how to get nearer.' With that, she took hold of me and pulled me closer. Oh, the embarrassment! Not only am I hobbling around, I've got the teacher's assistant practically hugging me to her bosom. Because we had stopped, the line of elephants had turned into a traffic jam, while some tried to negotiate their way around us.
Having loosely mastered the hold and the step, next came the rise and fall. The waltz should have a gentle rise and fall. Well, my left leg was no problem – it had a lovely rise and fall – but my right leg was all fall and no rise. I looked like a man trying to dance with one leg in the gutter and the other on the pavement. I was bobbing up and down on one foot and the other was as flat as a pancake.
The class was scheduled to last for two hours with a break in the middle for a cup of tea. As we queued up, a man who introduced himself as Bill said, 'You've been in the wars, son.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I hurt my foot playing football.'
'I'm struggling as well because I've got a withered calf and only one testicle.' A little too much information for a first meeting.
The girl behind the bar serving tea asked what I wanted.
'Two teas, please love,' I said, little knowing that the pimply -faced 15-year-old would one day be my dance partner and later still my wife. After finishing our cup of tea we started the next session with much more of the same, although I totally lost concentration.
'Len, try and keep up,' said Linda.
'I can't stop looking at Bill and thinking about his withered calf and his one bollock.'
At the end of the teaching session there was always a 30- minute free practice session, but by that time I'd had enough and so had my foot. I explained to Pauline, who seemed more approachable than Miss Tolhurst, that my foot was playing up but even so I had still enjoyed the evening.
'I won't be staying for the practice but we'll see you next week,' I said, thinking it was less awful than I'd imagined but mostly that if this will fix my foot then I must keep at it.
On the way home in the car Linda said, 'Well, that wasn't so bad was it?'
'Well, I've done a lot worse on a Tuesday night in the middle of February.'
My dad phoned me the next day. How was it? Did you like it? Are you going again? I had to admit it was okay and I would be going back the next week. In fact, I was quite looking forward to the next Tuesday's lesson.
Week two and we continued to develop the technique of the waltz, learning about sway of the body, the swing of the shoulders. It was all a far cry from my time some six years earlier at the Court School of Dancing where we just learnt to shuffle round, looking forward to the kiss-me excuse-me. Tuesday became the highlight of my week, and soon we were learning slightly more complex moves, like natural and reverse turns; I was actually getting to grips with it all. One thing that I also learned in those first few classes, something that remained true once I started my own classes, is the fact that you get a real cross-section of society learning to dance. There are fat ones, thin ones, tall ones, the short, the quiet, the noisy and, of course, there's always the class joker. Ours was a man called Tommy, a true cockney, who by day was a plasterer. He was always making us laugh. One day Miss Tolhurst said, 'Commence with your left foot.'
'Which foot?' shouts Tommy.
'Your left foot,' said our teacher.
'Is it the same side as your left ear, Miss Tolhurst?'
One of his favourite catchphrases was, 'I'm confused – one of my legs are both alike.'
The Erith Dance Studio was on two floors right above Burton's, the gentleman's tailor. Our classes were on the first floor and on the floor above that was where Henry Kingston used to teach. I say 'teach', but in actual fact he was a coach, not a teacher. In dancing a coach is well above a teacher. And he was not just any old coach, he was a top coach. Henry and Joy Tolhurst had been dance partners and were also married. They had been one of the top couples in the dance world for many years. Despite having seen them years before I hadn't taken that much notice and didn't connect them with the couple I had watched dancing when I had gone to the Erith with my dad and stepmum. I was soon to learn that Henry was an even better coach than he was a dancer.
Amongst those he coached were Bill and Bobbie Irvine who were world champions at the time, Richard Gleave and Janet Wade, who became amateur world champions, and Anthony Hurley and Fay Sexton who would also go on to become professional champions. While we were busy learning the rudiments in our beginners' class these people would troop through our studio on their way to Henry's inner sanctum. Not that anyone in our class had any idea who they were. All I knew was that Henry Kingston was a cut above, which naturally meant that anyone he taught was likewise. At the end of his coaching sessions he would come downstairs to our studio to check out his diary that he kept behind the tea bar in the corner. As soon as he came in everyone tried to dance a little better. It was like a silent voice had called out, 'Henry Kingston's in the house!' We would all suddenly stand a little straighter and try our hardest not to make a mistake. It was not that he ever said anything or was unpleasant; far from it, he was a charming man. As a former world champion he just had an aura about him.
About halfway through the evening of our third week of learning the waltz Henry Kingston appeared in the room along with two couples. Naturally everyone's elbows got a little straighter; I certainly tried standing a little taller with my head more erect.
'I'd like to introduce Bill and Bobbie Irvine.' He went on to explain their many achievements and then said, 'Billy and Bobbie are going to show you a quickstep.' He nodded to Pauline who put the needle on the record of the big record player in the opposite corner of the studio from the tea bar – they began dancing beautifully to a Victor Silvester record.
I, and probably everyone else, was captivated. I recalled seeing them before but this time I had an appreciation of just how brilliant they were. After the quickstep they stopped and Bill Irvine spoke to us. He was a Scotsman and had a lovely lilt to his voice.
'Good evening, ladies and gentleman. That, of course, was the quickstep and now we would like to demonstrate the tango.'
Bobbie stood beside him, the most elegant and sophisticated -looking woman I had ever seen in the flesh. I later found out that she was South African, while Bill had been a milkman before he became a professional dancer – perhaps he worked with Sean Connery.
After the Irvines finished, Henry Kingston introduced the other couple as amateur champions Bill and Sylvia Mitchell, who were going to show us the foxtrot.
'It's a dance that takes its name from its originator, vaudeville actor Henry Fox,' Henry informed us. After they
had finished, a waltz was put on and the Mitchells carried on dancing. Halfway through they split and Bill Mitchell went and invited a lady to dance with him. Sylvia, with her raven-black hair shining, headed in my direction.
'Shall we?' she asked ever so nicely.
'No!' I didn't say, no thank you, just no! I was petrified of making a fool of myself, despite having been learning nothing else but the waltz for three weeks. I clung to my seat as if I was about to be taken into a torture chamber or worse.
'Oh, come on, I know you know how to waltz.' I figured there couldn't be more than eight bars left, so up I stood and danced for the few remaining seconds. Years later I got to know Sylvia very well and she and I would often laugh about how scared I was that first time she asked me to dance.
After four weeks of learning the waltz we were told that we would be learning the quickstep. A sharp intake of breath came from all 30 couples.
'Gentlemen, right foot forward,' said Miss Tolhurst, and so we began learning our second dance. By the end of the evening we were positively flying around the floor. But just as most of the couples were getting the hang of it, disaster struck. The larger-than-life Mr and Mrs Rose fell over, and I'm sure that this measured several points at least, on the Richter scale. Mr Rose was back up on his feet like a shot, but Mrs Rose was a different kettle of fish: she was like a beached whale. No matter what we all tried we couldn't get her up; in fact, the more we tried to pull her up by her arms the more she slid across the ballroom floor on her arse. Eventually her legs hit the wall and that was the purchase we needed to get her back on her feet. Learning to dance is never dull.
I was sure that they wouldn't show up the following week because of the humiliation of what had happened, but come next Tuesday, there they were. Before the class started Mr Rose announced that it was their wedding anniversary. What none of us knew was that Mr Rose was the manager of the off-licence at the Co-op in Dartford.
'Miss Tolhurst, I've brought two bottles of Liebfraumilch with me and I was wondering if instead of tea, in the tea break, perhaps we might all partake of a glass of wine?'
'Certainly not, Mr Rose. We're non-licenced premises and we don't encourage people to drink alcohol while learning to dance at our school.'
I remember thinking, bloody posh business this ballroom dancing when you can turn down a glass of Liebfraumilch. Despite another week of mortification the Roses kept coming back for more.
At the beginning of April, after about six weeks of the class, it was announced that in a further six weeks we would be able to take our bronze medal in the waltz and quickstep – that's if we wanted to. It was all a far cry from how dancing classes are today – you would never spend four weeks learning just the waltz because people would be bored rigid. Instead we now teach a little bit about a lot in the first three or four weeks; you do a little bit of cha-cha, some jive, quickstep, waltz and foxtrot. They taught no Latin American dancing at all to begin with; it's probably a reflection on how these days people just want to get on with it. Back then, especially for those who wanted to become true ballroom experts, you were taught every nuance of a dance.
By this point I was no longer dancing under doctor's orders, as my foot was well on the way to total recovery; I'd given Dad back his slipper and I was back into a pair of ordinary shoes but not winkle-pickers, which are not ideal for ballroom dancing. I found I actually enjoyed myself: I looked forward to going and sitting around the edge of the studio waiting for my class to begin. I had bought myself a pair of the very latest fashion accessory – a pair of Hush Puppies. These were a suede shoe that every night before going dancing I carefully brushed with the little wire brush that came free with them. You had to be careful to brush them with the grain, rather than against it, so they looked pristine – I'd stopped being a Mod but being well turned out was still important for me.
At the beginning of April, in the midst of the build-up to our taking the bronze medal, Linda and I had to miss a week of classes.
'I'm sorry, Pauline, but we can't be here next week because we're going to Spain on holiday.' I think I may have said it a little more loudly than I needed to because I was proud of the fact that I was going abroad. Apart from visiting the coast on a few short breaks with Mum, and later with my mates, I had never done anything so exciting. Naturally it wasn't just Linda and I going on holiday. It was Linda's parents that had asked me if I'd like to join them on a package holiday – although I'm sure that Mr Baker didn't use the word package. Nowadays it seems almost impossible to believe that going abroad was considered so unusual; in the mid-sixties it was mostly the rich and famous that travelled, but relatively small numbers of people were beginning to sample foreign food, foreign money, while naturally avoiding the water. My mum never did go abroad, on holiday or for anything else. People took these 'inclusive holidays' and spent the rest of the year talking about it.
We were off to Sitges, about 25 miles south-west of Barcelona on the Costa Brava. In the mid-sixties it was a small place with very few hotels, but it was developing a reputation for being a little different, although I knew nothing of this. All I knew was that we were going to Spain, a country from where the great Real Madrid came from. Today Sitges is a large resort that boasts of being 'one of the hippest gay holiday spots in Europe'; in 1966 we still thought being gay was just being happy.
Harry Baker, Linda's father, worked in Hatton Garden making jewellery and could be described as being upwardly mobile, although none of us knew what that meant. He was a dapper little man – he looked a bit flash to me, but not in a bad way – he had a grey moustache that matched his hair and he lived in a very nice bungalow in Bexley with his wife Joy. Our flight was from Gatwick airport on a Saturday afternoon, which left plenty of time for Mrs B to go to the hairdressers for her regular shampoo and set. Unlike today when everyone travels casually, we were all dressed to the nines. Harry, in particular. He was wearing an open-necked shirt, a paisley cravat, all topped off by a blazer with gold buttons. Just before I'd left home to go round to the Bakers' from where we were leaving for the airport, Mum got in a bit of a panic in case I didn't have enough spending money.
'Len, you be sure to pay your way, don't miss your round. I'd be so ashamed if you let us down.'
With that, she slipped me an extra 20 quid. I already had a tenner, so if you think of average wages then it was like having £900 to spend. I was only going for a week! There was no chance of me not paying my way.
Despite never having been on a plane before I don't remember much about the flight itself. Although it was April it was beautiful and warm when we stepped off the aircraft and walked across the tarmac to the terminal building. If that impressed me, then the hotel was even better. I had my own room with a balcony. Linda, naturally, shared a room with her parents. I'd only stayed in English bed and breakfasts before, so this was just like being in a movie. One thing that didn't impress me was the food. There was no way I was even trying paella. Harry Baker took everything in his stride and acted as if it was an everyday occurrence eating strange and exotic foods. I spent the whole week living on chips, partly because my mum had told me that they ate horsemeat, so I assumed everything was either horse or pony. Harry was equally blasé about the bathroom.
'What's this, Mr B?' I said, pointing to the bidet.
'That, son, is for washing the sand off your feet after going to the beach,' said the worldly Harry Baker.
'Blimey! They think of everything in Spain.'
On our first morning on the Costa Brava we naturally went to the beach. We'd noticed from the hotel that there was a large bay and a smaller bay; the larger one was fairly busy, while the small one was completely deserted.
'Let's go and enjoy some peace and quiet at the small one. Far more exclusive,' announced Harry.
After breakfast Mr Baker led the way, followed by Mrs Baker, her blonde hair piled high like Zsa Zsa Gabor. Trailing a little way behind were Linda and I. Once we got to the beach we spread out our towels on the beauti
ful, golden sand while congratulating ourselves on how clever we were to be smart enough to spot the opportunity. After half an hour or so of sunbathing I decided it was time for a swim to cool off. I'd been in for a little while, swimming and sometimes floating on my back, all the while marvelling at how much warmer the water was than in Brighton. Just then I noticed what looked like a small log come floating towards me. My first thought was it must have drifted all the way across the Mediterranean, probably from Tangiers or somewhere equally exotic – I'd remembered seeing Tangiers on a map during a geography lesson. Just as that thought finished another entered my head.
'Oh shit!' I shouted. I couldn't help myself. And that's exactly what it was. Next I noticed dozens more small logs floating towards me; I was out the water like a shot. No wonder the beach was deserted – this was where Sitges' sewers emptied into the warm, beguiling Mediterranean waters.
We decided being part of the throng was definitely preferable to the exclusivity of our deserted beach. We picked up all of our stuff to trudge back the way we came to the larger, more crowded, beach. Spreading our towels amongst the deckchairs and other towels, Linda and I once again set about getting a golden tan. Mr and Mrs Baker sat underneath one of those colourful beach brollies, about a dozen feet away. A few yards in the opposite direction was an English couple stretched out on their blanket. At least we assumed they were English because they were as white as we were; 20 minutes later it was confirmed.
'We're just going in for a swim. Will you keep your eye on our stuff?' said the man in a broad Brummie accent.
'No problem,' I called back. 'We're not going anywhere.'
Not long after they had gone in the water two Spanish teenagers came wandering along the beach and sat down right next to the couple's stuff. I kept an eye on them to see they weren't out to nick anything, while the two lads surveyed the beach.
After a couple of minutes I nudged Linda. 'Here, take a look at those two.'