by Len Goodman
One day we were sitting around chatting in our crib; it was the place our gang sat to have our tea breaks. I was telling them about our progress through the first round of the competition.
'We know, Len, we've arranged a coach to come up the Albert Hall when you do your dancing.'
'Leave it out, Jimmy.' I thought it was just the lads having another good laugh at my expense.
'No, really Len, we have. We've got a 53-seater charabanc organised. None of us have ever been anywhere like that and we thought it might be our one opportunity.'
'You're serious, aren't you?' I asked, knowing the answer.
'Oh yes! There's platers, welders and a couple of people out the office. We're not going to miss out on your big night.'
Come the day of the competition Cherry and I went up early to the Albert Hall so as to ensure we were not rushed; we wanted to be perfectly prepared. We were confident, because Nina Hunt had done a terrific job teaching me the cha-cha-cha from scratch. But while we had won the Pontin's competition with me in my tailcoat, this competition, because it included Latin, meant that the man danced in a dinner jacket – and obviously trousers. For my money the tailcoat hides a multitude of sins and so my technique, or lack of it, was going to be fully exposed. I was also very well aware that the standard of the competitors, from all over the UK, was going to be much higher this time.
As Cherry and I walked out on to the floor of the Albert Hall there was some nice applause, punctuated by shouts of, 'Go on, Lenny Boy!', 'Come on, my son!'
It was more like being at West Ham for a football match than it was a ballroom-dancing competition. At any moment I expected to hear, 'Come on the 'ammers.' The 50-odd dockers had enjoyed themselves all the way up to Kensington on the coach, crates of beer having lubricated their journey. I'm not sure whether it was the shouting of my workmates or the lack of a tailcoat or just my nerves, but it was not my, and consequently our, finest four minutes. When we came off the floor Cherry's dad was there to meet us.
'Len, I'm afraid to say you were terrible,' said Henry. 'I think you'll be lucky if you make it through to the next round.'
My first thought was, I'd blown it, which was quickly followed by, what would the lads say when I got back to work on Monday? I quickly put that out of my mind because they were probably too far-gone to actually remember much of what was happening. The compère read out the numbers of the couples who were to progress to round two and, much to my surprise, and even more to Henry's, our number was called; although 36 was the next to last, so we were on tenterhooks.
For the second round my nerves had subsided somewhat, but my confidence had taken a bit of a battering from Henry's criticism. This round was made up of 24 dancers and we danced much better and got through to round three – the last 12. From there we made it into the final along with five other couples. There were two from Scotland, one from Northern Ireland, and three from England, including Cherry and myself.
Come the final I was feeling very nervous, but I surprised myself with our dancing and thought we'd done far better than in any of the previous rounds; we were especially pleased with the cha-cha-cha. We may have been helped by the fact that the boys from Harland and Wolff were rather more subdued in their support; the booze-filled euphoria had become somewhat more soporific. Although they did give us a standing ovation as we came out, out of the corner of my eye I could see a couple of them sound asleep in their seats.
Waiting for the results was more nerve-racking than actually performing. The standard pattern is to do the top six places from first to last. As I stood there I thought, please let it be number 36. I was squeezing Cherry's hand so tightly I just about crushed it.
'In first place: number four.' It was one of the Scottish couples. Next up it was 24, then 31 – we hadn't made the top three. At that point another feeling kicked in. Please don't let us be last!
'In fourth place, couple number 36, Mr Len Goodman and Miss Cherry Kingston.'
In that one moment my feeling of invincibility was shattered forever, which was no bad thing. I realised then, and it's a feeling that's never left me, that it's hard work that makes winners. It has, of course, got something to do with talent, and there's also a little bit of luck that comes into play, but as the old saying goes – the harder I work, the luckier I become. Not that we had totally lost out, as the prize for coming fourth was a silver medal, which I still have. It is mounted in a little Perspex display stand, made for me by my dad's dad in his little garden shed.
Cherry and I were also picked to represent Great Britain in a novice competition against Holland. This called for another step up the ladder, but more for me, in that we had to dance a tango as well as a jive. It was back to Balham and Nina Hunt for more coaching. This time she didn't bother asking to see our routine.
'So, I'm teaching you from scratch, am I, Len?' said Nina with a smile on her face. You're probably thinking I'm referring to the tango, because coming from Argentina, which is obviously a Latin American country, then you might suppose it's a Latin dance, but that's not the case. The tango is a ballroom dance and it was Henry who taught us, and Nina taught us the jive. Originally the category we now call Latin American was Latin and American, so the jive being an American dance came under that classification.
On a Friday, a month later, we were on the coach for Holland along with the other couples who were competing from Great Britain, which included the two Scottish couples that had beaten us at the Albert Hall. The competition, which we won, was on Saturday and then we travelled back home on Sunday; the camaraderie was fantastic and we had a brilliant time. We got back to Cherry's house late on the Sunday evening to find that Henry Kingston had been rushed to hospital. The following day Cherry's dad died.
Chapter Seven
Standing On the Shoulders
of Giants
When my mum's parents died in the 1950s it made me sad. I loved my Granddad Albert in his flat cap and his funny sayings. I loved my Nan, too, who made me laugh with her made-up rhymes, but when you're younger and an old person close to you dies it affects you in a different way from when someone who is closer to your age passes away. It's very different when it's a person you have come to know and like as a friend. And while Henry Kingston was much older than me, he had become my friend, but more importantly he was my mentor. I had already sensed that the opportunity he'd given me could be my one chance in a lifetime. It was not one I'd gone in search of, but because of him it had come my way. Initially Henry had been excited that Cherry was showing some interest in competing, and soon he began to see that we really did have potential, all of which makes it all the more tragic that he wasn't there to see us fully realise our dancing talent. So with Henry's passing I was left feeling both sad and, from a selfish point of view, frustrated and a little lost. I'd known that he had suffered from a bad back that he put down to dancing, but I later heard he'd been involved in a car accident that the doctors thought may have triggered the cancer that killed him. I was 22 years old; I'd been dancing for about a year. I felt that my world had been turned on its head. His death was so sudden and the shock so dreadful for both Joy and Cherry that, to begin with, no one thought about the Erith Dance Studio, but very quickly the realisation kicked in.
About ten days after Henry died, Joy sat me down.
'Len, I've got a proposition. Will you give up your job at the docks, turn professional and help me teach in the dance studio? Help us run it?'
'How can I do that? I only know the routines I've been taught.'
It was a bit like asking one of the celebrities on Strictly Come Dancing to start teaching. People who watch the TV show imagine they can really dance, but all they've done is to learn short routines and that's the limit of what they know. They have no understanding of the finer points of dance, the intricacies or whatever, and why should they? They're like someone that's learned one tune on the piano, albeit perfectly, but don't ask them to play another tune because they won't know where to start. It's not a
criticism, it's fact, and that was precisely how I was. I was so inexperienced it was frightening. There was another problem: just like a male celebrity on the television I only knew my own steps – I had no clue what the woman should be doing.
What is it they say about necessity being the mother of invention? Well, Joy was about to invent Britain's first ex-dock worker-cum-welder dance teacher. She said, 'You can do it, Len, I know you can. Here's how we'll manage. Cherry and I will show you what to teach before each class begins.'
Put like that it sounded really simple, and to some extent it was. I jacked it in at Harland and Wolf and before each class began we'd sit in the little office behind the tea bar where we'd go over the dances – again and again. Cherry and her mum would explain and sometimes show me. 'This is how the girl does it and this is how the boy does it. Have you got it, Len?'
'Sort of,' was my usual response. 'Sorry to keep asking this, but which one of you was the bloke?'
Naturally, Mum, Dad and my stepmum were thrilled. Their little Lenny had become a dance teacher; no more sweating it out at the docks. Obviously I was no overnight Henry Kingston, far from it. Joy took over the coaching in the upstairs studio; I was down in the lower room with Pauline and Cherry – all of which was fine, but I would have failed if I hadn't had one thing that has stood me in good stead throughout my life, and, as I said right at the start of the book, that one thing is my personality. It was also a lesson into why people go to a particular dance studio. As often as not they are attracted by the personality of the teacher, or not as the case may be. In a matter of weeks the Erith Dance Studio's classes had gone from quiet Joy to brash Len; it wasn't long before many of the pupils found my stumbling efforts too much to bear. Inevitably some people decided to hang up their dancing shoes.
In fact, I had exactly the same thing happen at my own studio about ten years ago. There was a girl who worked for me, who was very quiet and her personality was not very outgoing at all. She was very good at doing private lessons for couples, but she wanted to extend her repertoire and so she was always on at me to run her own classes and kept pestering me to give her the chance; I kept fobbing her off with excuses. I finally relented, in part because I was starting a new class of my own on a Thursday and needed to put an advert in the local paper. I suggested that she ran a class on a Sunday evening, a day when we were normally closed and so whatever happened with the class didn't really matter – it was better than nothing.
From the first week there were about 30 people there and to my surprise it seemed to go pretty well. Unfortunately, after three weeks of classes, the girl's mother called to say her daughter had appendicitis and was in hospital. I stepped into the breach and ran her next Sunday class – it was my dance school and naturally I thought I was a great teacher. Well, by the time she came back, three weeks later, there were just four couples left. The people who went to her class really liked the girl, who was more like a Sunday school teacher, and couldn't get on with me at all.
'Come on, shake your hips, girl, move your arse!' was not what they were used to hearing.
Not that I was quite so brash when I first started teaching, but the people who were used to Joy Tolhurst, world champion ballroom dancer, must have found it more than a little bit shocking to be confronted with me. At first I did some really stupid things. One evening Cherry and her mum were showing me some steps for the jive that I was to teach in class a little later. They demonstrated the change of hands behind the back; first they showed me the boy's steps and then the girl's steps. 'Have you got that, Len?'
'Sort of, but you'd better show me one more time.'
Once everyone arrived for their class we began by working on things that we'd done in a previous lesson. Following our tea break in the middle of the evening, I decided to leave the women chatting to get started with the men on the change of hands behind the back step in the jive. Having taught all the men how to do it they sat down and then I got the women up to teach them the step. Having taught them I said:
'Okay. Get back with your partner and do it together.'
All would have been fine, but for one small detail: I'd taught both the men and the women the men's part and the whole thing ended in a disaster. A minor catastrophe compared to what happened to me during a quickstep class a few weeks later.
On this evening there were about 14 couples and we were working on what's called the spin turn. While most people sort of got it, one couple just couldn't seem to manage it at all. As I watched them I could see that it was the woman who was having the most trouble and so I went over and said, 'Here, let me dance with you, it will be easier for me to show you where you and your partner are going wrong.'
At that point everyone else stopped dancing so that they could look at us. I'd already identified one of their problems; she was none too light on her feet. In the spin turn it was like trying to shift a Sherman tank; even getting her moving around the floor was really hard. I was literally pulling her around the turns with virtually no help from her. Very quietly, so that no one else could hear, I said to her, 'Could you just try and be a little bit lighter on your feet?'
With that the woman exploded. 'You pig! You dirty filthy pig!' She went crimson in the face and started shouting even louder. 'I've got a bad back. You pig!' She went on like a woman possessed, began crying and then went over to stand by her man so she could continue her tirade with his full support. 'I've never been so insulted in my entire life. We're leaving! Come on, George.'
With that she grabbed her man, who was close to half her size and weight, and marched out the studio door. She never came back.
It was a salutary lesson and one that actually prompted me to get better qualified. I read once that surgeons can only pass on 10 per cent of their knowledge, and the other 90 per cent is derived from experience; dancing is no different. As hard as Joy tried to teach me, and she did a good job, I always felt a fraud. I vowed to master the art of teaching. I'd been told that Latin technique was simpler than ballroom so I decided to get qualified first in Latin American. I bought a book on the subject, written by Doris Lavell; it was the official Latin Technique for the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, no less. Not long after having ploughed my way through it, I thought that if she had written the book then who better to go to for some lessons?
I was already aware, having read Miss Lavell's book and talked with Joy about her, of just what an important figure in the dance world she was. She and her partner, Pierre, had been the most famous couple in Latin American dancing. I say 'had been' because Monsieur Pierre, a Frenchman, had died before I got into dancing. He, apparently, was a large man whereas Doris was petite, so they were something of an incongruous dancing couple. Immediately after World War Two, Pierre and Doris decided to go travelling in order to develop their Latin skills, as well as to learn new dances and techniques. They visited Brazil, the USA and Cuba. Havana in the late 1940s was a glamorous city full of glittering nightlife, casinos and holidaying Mafia bosses. In the immediate post-war years Latin American was considered a bit of a joke by the ballroom dance world, but thanks to the Lavells this reputation was changed for ever. They spent months learning from the great teachers and upon their return to the UK they set about formulating their own techniques to be submitted to the Imperial Society for approval. After months of deliberation the Society had still not decided whether their techniques were either good or acceptable.
The difficulty for the Society was that the Lavells' ideas were not just different, they were revolutionary – that's what going to Cuba does for you. For example, there were originally two types of rumba – the square rumba that was danced on the first beat, but the Cubans danced it on the second beat. When you tried dancing the Cuban way it felt as if you were dancing off time and out of rhythm, so it was no small change that they were trying to get the Society to accept. Unable to gain acceptance of their ideas they decided to return to Cuba for more lessons and research. Finally they came home with what they thought was the
definitive technique; thankfully the Imperial Society agreed and their book became the bible for Latin American dancing for close to 20 years. Shortly after I went to Miss Lavell a man named Walter Laird brought out what has become the definitive book on Latin American, but his work could not have happened without the pioneering efforts of the Lavells.
In the dance world of the sixties and seventies there were certain ladies that had to be treated with the upmost respect; on no account were these women ever to be referred to by their Christian name. There was a Miss Josephine Bradley, she was always Miss Bradley, Phyllis Hayler who was likewise Miss Hayler and, of course, Miss Lavell. This was despite the fact that Doris Lavell had long since ceased to be a Lavell, having married a dancer named James Arnell who we all called Jimmy. About three years after first going to Miss Lavell, out of the blue, she said, 'Len, you may call me Doris.' That was it, I was in the club.
Doris was not only a great teacher; she was a great character too. She and Jimmy had a Rolls-Royce, but they hardly ever used it. Instead they used their other car, one of those French Citroëns that looked like they were made out of corrugated tin. They also had a yacht that was moored down in Monte Carlo harbour – it was a catamaran called Soho Cat. It wasn't dancing that bought these luxuries but Jimmy's family money. His father owned a string of garages called Blue Star; they were all over the South East of England in the sixties. When his father died he left Jimmy a sizeable sum that he and Doris enjoyed spending, but they never gave up teaching and dancing.
One day Cherry and I turned up at the Greek Street studio to be met by a distraught Doris – not that this was unusual as there was always some tragedy or crisis happening in her and Jimmy's life together.