Strictly’s Len Goodman was an old school gent and the least showbiz of all the celebrities I’ve ever met
WHEN I was growing up near Dartford, Kent, Len Goodman was already a household name — long before his Strictly fame.
Like hundreds of other local children, I attended the Goodman Dance Academy, set up with his first wife Cherry in 1973, where there were classes in everything from waltz to disco.
More frequently, as a teenager, I spent many a happy night at the under-18s disco in his studio, nestled above the Rumpy burger bar — a shabby Wimpy imitation — in Dartford town centre.
So when I took over writing the official Strictly Come Dancing Annual in 2007, I was thrilled to meet Len, as I would on numerous occasions until he left the show in 2016.
We would often meet for a catch-up over coffee at Bluewater Shopping Centre — and he would sometimes dash off afterwards to take his “old mum” shopping, until she passed away in 2015.
On other occasions we’d catch up at his beloved golf course in the Kent countryside, before he shared a round with his son and fellow dancer, James.
Len always arrived early and whatever the weather, he’d find a table outside, so he could enjoy his habitual cigar.
It was always a pleasure.
The fact is, with Len, what you saw was what you got.
An old school gent, through and through, Len never once let me pay for a coffee or a meal in all the time I knew him.
He was witty, charming and curmudgeonly in equal measures.
He had a killer smile, a roguish twinkle in his eye and a direct way of speaking his mind.
Frankly, off the screen, he was the least “showbiz” of all the celebrities I’ve ever met.
He had no time for divas, shirkers or whingers and would always dodge star-studded parties, which he hated with a passion.
And no matter how far Strictly boosted his fame, Len always insisted he was “just a cog” in the spectacle’s wheel.
He never once lost his sense of gratitude to the show that made his name.