by Len Goodman
'Well, I do,' I said
'Dad, it's embarrassing. What if we bump into one of my mates? You look ridiculous.'
'Well, what if we bump into one of my mates?' I suggested.
Anyway, for a quiet life I pulled my shirt out of my trousers and off we went to the pictures. I felt more than a little self-conscious. Just before we went in to watch the film I followed the golden rule of the over-50s. Never trust a fart, never waste an erection and never pass a toilet without having a pee. After five minutes of waiting James came looking for me.
'Dad, hurry up, we're going to miss the film.'
He found me under the hot air hand drier trying to dry the tail of my shirt – I'd peed all over it.
I've talked a lot about my love for golf and should probably say that it was all Cherry's fault that I got involved with the game at all. Someone once said golf is a serious of tragedies with the occasional miracle, but the reason I started playing was a complete fluke. In 1971 Cherry had a female pupil at the dance school that was a member of Dartford Golf Club. Her name was Jan and they became friends and would meet for lunch up at the golf club. Following a bit of cajoling from Jan, Cherry booked six lessons with Peter Mitchell, the assistant professional. He was a 16-year-old lad then, but went on to win many tournaments throughout Europe. After six lessons Cherry had a nine-hole playing lesson on the course and I went along to walk around with her and the Pro. Well Cherry had as much talent for golf as Diarmuid Gavin had for dancing; she actually missed more balls than she hit. As she was playing her last hole I said, 'Give me that club – I can do better than that!'
As I went to hit it, I missed it. I think if I had hit it I wouldn't have bothered, but missing it made me mad so I booked six lessons with Peter Mitchell; from then on I was hooked, although Cherry somehow got unhooked and she never played again.
As the nineties rolled along the school was doing fine, thanks as much as anything to the good staff I had around me. My life, like most people's lives, was not one full of excitement and amazing things. Holidays came and went, judging trips abroad came and went and there was the ever-present fun I derived from golf and the friends that I made through the golf club. In 1995 I joined the London Club – the one that they had to come and pick me up from when I did the pilot for Strictly Come Dancing. Naturally, John Knight joined too, but I also made a whole load of new mates through the club, which was brilliant; working at the dance studio makes it harder to keep friends because you work a lot in the evenings. Most of the members of the London Club are self-made business people of one type or another; we had the odd mega-rich and one or two characters with shady pasts. Nick Leeson, the guy who brought down Barings Bank for £800 million, is a member.
One of my regular playing partners is Sir Henry Cooper – one of the loveliest guys you could ever wish to meet. My regular game was with three real characters, Dave, Tony and Harry. Dave is a natural wit and anything he spots about you physically or personally he preys upon. Tony, who is about five foot six, is regularly on the receiving end of his jibes. One day Tony had been practising and walked into the clubhouse saying:
'It's cold enough to freeze your balls off.'
'With your little legs it must be a ground frost,' said Dave.
With Harry and me it's our noses. One day I had a cold and my conk was blocked up.
'Here, Len, let me blow it for you. I'm nearer to it than you are,' said Dave. We had a spate of things going missing from our lockers so Dave put up signs all over the place saying 'Neighbourhood Locker Watch – keep your personal belongings safe.'
However, the real bonus, and a totally unexpected one, from becoming a member of the London Club was that I found myself a new dance teacher – which only goes to prove how important golf really is! One Saturday, after a round with Dave, Tony and Harry, we headed into the clubhouse to have one of those 'what if', and 'if only', conversations that you do after a game. I ordered a sausage sandwich and as I was standing waiting for it I noticed an attractive girl and a gentleman sitting at a table over by the window; well, attractive girls and golf clubs don't usually go together so it certainly got my attention. I didn't like to stare but I had a feeling I knew her and, sitting with my golfing mates, I kept trying to think where I knew her from. We finished our in-depth analysis of our golf game and on my way out of the clubhouse I had to pass her table.
'Don't I know you from somewhere?' Original or what?
'Yes, Len, you do. I teach dancing in Essex and I've seen you many times at competitions, but possibly you remember seeing me when I also used to come to have lessons at your Gravesend school. My name's Sue.'
'That must be it, thank God we've worked that out.' She then introduced me to the man that she was sitting with.
'This is Jim Lamb from America, I work at Lloyds Insurance Market and he's an attorney for the State of Kentucky.'
'Well, nice to meet you Jim, and nice to put a name to a face, Sue. I tell you, if you're ever looking to change dance schools give me a call, I'm looking for a good teacher.'
A few days later she called.
'Hi Len, were you serious about a job?'
'Yes,' and I said I needed help with both classes and private lessons.
'Well, I fancy a change so maybe I could come to work at your school in the evenings and weekends because I'm still working at Lloyds.'
I agreed we'd give it a go and Sue was brilliant; she worked every Saturday, and three days a week she would drive to Dartford from Southend at seven in the morning, park up, get the train to London and then after work take the train back to Dartford to work in the studio until ten before driving home. Amazingly, after working together for ten years, we discovered all our metronomes were in sync and Sue and I are very happy together. Despite the fact that Sue taught in my school we hardly ever talked to one another – she would come in and teach her classes and then go; it's so very different from the sort of relationships that develop in a more normal office environment. But it's a funny old world and sometimes things come along when you're least expecting it, which is exactly what happened to us – maybe a bit on the late side, but my life is finally complete.
During the second half of the decade I was affected by two sad events. My dad passed away in 1996 and Mum went to live in a home; she died shortly after the millennium. The loss of your parents is awful and as someone once said to me, it's a bit like becoming an orphan – which is true even when you're as old as I was when it happened. Dad was 82 when he died, so he had a pretty good innings. I loved my dad and at the risk of repeating myself I learned a lot from him. The divorce from my mum had long been forgotten; Dad and my stepmum Rene were real soulmates. They had nearly 40 very happy years together and really were a perfect couple. I've often said that I wish I could have found a wife like my stepmum, that's how good they were together. Dad's funeral took place not long after the IRA had bombed Canary Wharf, which in normal circumstances would have been two totally unconnected events, but they gave rise to a close shave with the law.
After my dad's cremation I kept his ashes in an urn, as the plan was to get the headstone where my nan is buried changed, after which my stepmum and I could sprinkle Dad's ashes there. The week or so after his cremation John Knight and I had been up to London for a meal and were on our way home in the early hours, having been to a Casino. We were on our way across Westminster Bridge where we were confronted by an armoured vehicle blocking the road, and standing beside it were soldiers with machine guns. They indicated for us to stop, which I did, and lowered the window. An army corporal said:
'Okay, get out of the car.' Unlike the police there was no politeness involved. John and I both got out of the car and stood on the bridge next to it feeling like a couple of kids caught nicking sweets.
'Get your hands out of your pockets.'
'What?' I couldn't believe the way they spoke to us.
'You heard. And open the boot.'
'Look, mate, I'm a bloody East-End bloke who has been up town for a n
ight out and you're treating me like I'm Paddy McGinty's goat.'
'Just open the boot, do as you're told.' As I opened it, right smack in the middle was the box in which was an urn containing Dad's ashes.
'What's that?'
'That! That's my dad's ashes, he was cremated last week,' I said, not quite believing what was happening.
'Open the box.'
'No! I 'm not bloody opening it! The bloody ashes might fly out.' From thinking it was all a bit stupid I had now got the right hump.
'Open the box.'
'No!'
'Sarge, we've got a right one here.' With that the sergeant walked around to the back of the car.
'What's going on?' asked the sergeant.
'This bloke is refusing to open this suspicious parcel.'
'Look,' I said, as I picked up the parcel. Well that was it, four guns were trained on me; it was like something out of a film. 'These are my father's remains that we're endeavouring, once the grave is ready, to place next to his mum and I'm not prepared to open this box in case I lose them.'
With that, an officer came over, having seen them raise their weapons. I went through the same rigmarole with him and eventually they let us go. I can't imagine what my old man would have said to it all. I hope he would have been proud of me, because I was always proud of him.
When I finally go, I would love to be taken in the sidecar of a motor bike, sitting up, with a white scarf with a wire frame that makes the scarf flare out behind me. I think someone might object to that; I'm sure Health and Safety or some other department will put the kibosh on it. It would be perfect – they can take me down the crematorium like that and then stick me in the box and have me done. I'd like them to play 'Come on baby, light my fire' as I slip down the runway. Then I'd like my ashes to be put into a very nice tub or a half butt with a rhododendron; I'd like it put in my son's garden. I want to be a constant pain in the arse to James. Even when it's time for him to move house he will have to remember to pick up his old man and put me in the back of the removal van. Not that I'm thinking of popping my clogs anytime soon.
When my mum passed away in 2000 she was 89 years old and had been in a nursing home for quite a few years. Ever since I can remember, Mum would say to me, 'Well at least when I go, Len, you'll have the house, it's all paid for.'
Well, she would have been so bloody cross with what actually happened. The care home that Mum was in was a very nice place that cost £500 a week, so during the time she was in there it used up almost all my inheritance. From my point of view it was no problem at all: it was money well spent and I would have been happy if it had used all of it and more. But Mum would have been livid. I always was the apple of her eye and she would have been furious if she had known how much it was costing. If she had been lucid enough she would have topped herself. She never was any different all her life: she hated banks or anything like that and she hated waste; it would have really made her mad.
Probably my greatest regret is that my mum and dad never got to see what happened a few years later – their little Lenny on the telly; they would have been so proud. However, at this point in my life I had no idea about what was to be my future. I was resigned to continuing to do what I'd been doing for the last ten years or so. Not that this was a problem: as I kept telling Sue, 'It'll give me even more time for golf.'
When the word started to spread around the ballroom and Latin American dance world that the BBC were planning a new television show I didn't think for a minute that it might involve me. In our little world the gossip machine went into overdrive as people tried to second-guess who the BBC might pick to be a judge. Even when people I knew were interviewed about the possibility of appearing I didn't really think I was in the running; I was just miffed that no one had thought to even speak to me about it.
Chapter Twelve
Strictly Unbelievable
Well it is, isn't it? Sixty years old and I get 'discovered'; well, I get a job on the television. Grandad Albert in his flat cap would have been bloody surprised, and so would my nan: she'd have a little rhyme up her sleeve to make sure I didn't get too big for my boots. Having done the pilot on Saturday 24 April I spent the weekend enjoying myself. I was feeling a little fragile on Sunday morning after the night at the Ivy, but had a lovely day on the Sunday, which was my actual birthday. This was the start of a run of celebrations amongst my closest friends – a bit like waiting for a bus and then they all come along at once. There's a few things good about growing old: first it means you haven't died young, and second you appreciate things that when you were young you might have dismissed. When I was younger happiness was normally something I recognised in retrospect, whereas now I always try to be aware of it as it happens, not after it happens. On my sixtieth birthday Richard Gleave, the guy whose records I melted nearly 40 years earlier, gave me an expensive bottle of Dom Perignon. Shortly afterwards he and his wife Ann invited me to his sixtieth at Chewton Glen, a beautiful hotel near Bournemouth. I gave him a bottle of champagne; I've got a feeling it was the same bottle he gave me. Next up came Michael Barr who with wife Vicky had his sixtieth at Stoke Park, a country house hotel surrounded by a beautiful golf course. Mike organised a golf game for the guests, and an errant tee shot of mine landed in the churchyard beside a plaque saying this was where the poet Gray had written his Elegy:
'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove'
In my case it was my two-wood that struck the wayward tee shot. Later I noticed Richard had given Michael a bottle of Dom Perignon and I suspect it's the same one he'd originally given me; I'm hoping to get it back on my seventieth birthday.
The first ever Strictly Come Dancing was scheduled for 15 May 2004, which gave everyone involved with the show plenty to do. There were meetings where we talked over things that had happened on the pilot and how we needed to tweak and change things for the big night. I was, according to the BBC, made head judge because I was the one with the most experience of ballroom and Latin American dancing – I gave it 'technical and professional credibility'. One thing that was clear from the start was that we couldn't just look at the celebrities and judge them purely on technique because, let's face it, they were, for the most part, coming off a standing start. It was important to look at all the qualities that they would bring to their particular dance, even if in some cases the word 'quality' is a long way wide of the mark. It was clear to me that you can only judge it as you see it, what actually happens from dance to dance and from week to week, and it was something that would come home to roost for judges, celebrities and professionals.
One of the biggest challenges when judging individual dances is that you watch them one by one and therefore it's hard to compare them to another couple's performances. To begin with we gave more sixes and sevens as we tried to find our basis for judging people. On my mind, probably more than the other three judges, was a sense of responsibility I felt to the dance world; I was the dance judge's judge. The BBC told us it was their mission to bring in a big Saturday night audience, the Holy Grail, as they called it, of eight-year-olds to eighties. This meant that they had to attract new people to dance, but we also couldn't alienate the serious dance fans and participants. I came away from our production meetings thinking that it was a big gamble. My fears that it might not work were never far from my mind in the three weeks between pilot and premiere. While the production team were very positive about the series no one was sure if it would work or whether it might all just fall a bit flat. What I cared about most was that dancing's image was not tarnished; whether or not it was a hit show was totally out of my hands – it was all a bit of 'suck it and see'. But you have to admire the BBC. They didn't poke it away at 10.35 p.m. on a Tuesday evening: they went for it, big time. It was the glitz and the glamour of a fullscale production. In fact, it wasn't the first time I'd been on the television – I'd been a judge on the BBC's Come Dancing during the 1980s with Angela Rippon. A judge on th
e original show hardly ever said anything, and if you did it was only a sentence: 'I thought you danced well and I award my points to Home Counties North.'
Having committed to be on Strictly for eight weeks I was also just a little worried that if it was terrible, and I was crap, then all my mates in dancing would go after me – big time. I could feel the giants of the dance world, past and present, looking down on me.
From the outset I had a problem, one that has reoccurred ever since: there were one or two celebrities that I've heard of, but there's usually more who I wouldn't know from Adam – soap stars in particular, because when they're on TV I'm usually out teaching. The eight celebrities on that first series were a mixed bag and need to be praised as they were the guinea pigs. David Dickinson I'd heard of, Lesley Garrett I knew, likewise Martin Offiah, because I'm keen on sport, and I watch the news so I'd heard of Natasha Kaplinski – the thinking man's crumpet. But Jason Wood, never heard of him, still have no idea what he does, Claire Sweeney I don't think I knew, Verona Joseph, no, and Christopher Parker from EastEnders I definitely didn't know.
For the show to succeed it didn't matter how much planning went into it: unless the professional dancers could do their bit then the whole thing would fail. It all boils down to the art of teaching and how to get the best out of your pupil, whether it's at the world championships or on Strictly Come Dancing. If you've got a celebrity who is limited in their ability it's the professional's task to disguise it. They need to give them steps that will make them look good, not stupid. On the 2007 series of Strictly Come Dancing you couldn't show Kenny Logan, the former rugby union player, the same routine as singer Alesha Dixon was taught; her routines were far more complicated. It's no different for the professionals. Take Anton du Beke: he's a great ballroom dancer but he's not as strong on the Latin American side, although that's being picky because he's a fine dancer; he brings out in his celebrities a much higher standard in their ballroom than their Latin American, because that is where his strengths lie. On the other hand Karen Hardy, another of the professionals, who partnered the winner of series four, Mark Ramprakash, did really difficult stuff with him, but when she danced with Bill Turnbull on an earlier series she did much simpler things, routines that Bill could cope with, but they made him look pretty good. Darren Bennett, who won series two with Jill Halfpenny, did the most brilliant jive, and they deservedly got four tens. In the next series he did a jive with Gloria Hunniford, which was much simpler: it was nice and easy and it suited his partner's abilities. It's a testament to all the professional dancers on both the UK and the US show that they create routines that show them to the best of their joint abilities. This they do in just a week, which is a fantastic achievement and one that may be somewhat undervalued by the viewers that are not dancing professionals.