The BBC took a huge risk in April 2004.

It had come up with an apparently strange method in order to find a new show with mass appeal.

Ballroom dancing was out of favor. The quickstep and jive were popular during the Brylcreem and Butlin’s holidays. Now, the firm was seeking to make a few old fanatics’ nostalgic preserve the centerpiece of its Saturday nights.

The producers experienced a crisis just days before the first show.

Craig Revel Horwood, Arlene Phillips, Bruno Tonioli, and a well-known name from the world of dance had all been given contracts. The fourth judge backed out at the last minute.

The BBC was at a lost for words. Scores of past world champions – industry titans – had already been interviewed, but none had been right. Professional dancers on the show were questioned if any celebrities had been left off.

Former New Zealand champion Erin Boag made a tentative idea. “Have you considered Len Goodman?” she inquired.

“He’s just a Basic dancing teacher, but he’s a bit of a character.”

Leonard Gordon Goodman, an East End barrow boy, was born on April 25, 1944, in Farnborough, Kent.

He grew up in an overcrowded two-up, two-down terrace in London’s East End. He remembered “plenty of love and fun, but very little money.”

It was a difficult neighborhood. Before World War II, two of his relatives were active members of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. When the fighting began, irate mobs invaded the family’s home on Howard Street. Only the sound of an air raid siren dispersed the mob, preventing serious injuries.

The family made a living by selling vegetables off of barrows. Every Monday morning, Goodman’s grandfather Albert pawned his gold watch to acquire the week’s supply.

Len observed the elderly man entice customers with a silky patter peppered with earthy remarks. Many of his grandfather’s lines were eventually used by him on Strictly Come Dancing.

Albert Goodman did a good job. The barrow grew into two businesses in Bethnal Green, with enough money left over to purchase Len’s parents’ Kent greengrocery.

The marriage soon fell apart after they relocated. Goodman’s father went away, and his mother buried the shame of her divorce by focusing on her work.

‘You’re going to fail.’
Young Len enjoyed football and cricket at school but was not a good student. “It’s clear you’ll never amount to anything, Goodman,” his headmaster said. “In class, you’re a failure. In life, you will be a failure.”

Every evening, he pulled a barrow of vegetables around town to assist his mother, just like his grandfather had done. This, Goodman believed, was a more useful education than any school had ever given him since it taught him how to speak to and engage others.

He attended his first dance class when he was 14 years old. He disliked the foxtrot but had a strong interest in women. The ‘excuse me’ dance, during which you had to kiss your partner farewell, was the most electrifying point of the night, he later wrote.

A year later, Goodman graduated from high school “with no sense of loss on either side.” He began an apprenticeship in an engineering factory, but he admits he was terrible at it.

Former Strictly Come Dancing judge Len Goodman has died at the age of 78.
Ex-Strictly judge Goodman has received numerous tributes.
He studied welding and got a job at the Harland & Wolff Royal Docks in Woolwich. It wasn’t his favorite job, but it paid well enough for him to have fun on weekends.

Goodman became a sharp-dressed Mod, riding his Vespa through Brighton on Saturday afternoons, hoping to avoid fights with competing Rockers gangs.

He idolized rock ‘n’ roll and thought ballroom dancing was for ‘old fogeys,’ like many of his generation. Afterwards, while playing football in Hackney Marshes, he broke his metatarsal and was told to choose an activity to help rebuild its strength.

Love at first sight
Joy Tolhurst used to be a world champion. Goodman’s first dance lesson was impeded by the fact that she was wearing a winklepicker on one foot and a carpet shoe on the other. He gradually fell in love with both the waltz and Mrs Tolhurst’s daughter.

On and off the court, he and Cherry Tolhurst became partners. Their first competition was in the Royal Albert Hall, which was sponsored by Pontin’s. Goodman rehearsed in his living room, with a lamp behind him to view his hip action in the shadows.

Goodman heard huge bellows from the audience as the couple sashayed onto the sacred stage. Fifty-three dock workers had hired a coach to accompany him and were well lubricated.

When Joy’s husband died unexpectedly, she requested Len, 22, to assist her in the classroom. Students used to learning from a poised former professional were taken aback by learning from an ex-welder.

Cha-cha-cha

By 1973, Goodman and Cherry were driving tens of thousands of miles each year, presenting the cha-cha-cha and rumba to amateur classes across the country.

They married and established their own dance studio in Dartford. After winning a rising star competition in Blackpool, the couple chose not to participate professionally again.

“I became tired of the corporate politics,” Goodman explained. “The fact that you had to appease and schmooze people you didn’t particularly like because you didn’t want to offend them because they were judges.”

The choice strained his marriage, which he said had devolved into more of a dance duet than a romance.

Everything fell apart as the dance stopped. Cherry abandoned him for a multimillionaire Frenchman, leaving Len with an empty house and just half of his business.

When he met Lesley, a former wife of Black Sabbath’s manager, his heartstrings were mended. The couple had a son a year later.

Night Sweats
The film Saturday Night Fever rescued his business.

“You’ve heard the music; now learn the dances,” Goodman said on posters. There were lines stretching halfway down Dartford High Street when Grease was released, and “the seam of gold turned into a complete goldmine.”

Goodman was about to turn 60 when the BBC called to urge he audition for Strictly Come Dancing. He was happy with his new partner Sue, and their dancing studio was doing well.

He wasn’t searching for new challenges, in fact. He hoped to wind down his business and play a round of golf. Then his competitive instincts kicked in, and Goodman boarded the bus to Strictly’s studios, dressed to the nines.

Revel Horwood, Phillips, and Tonioli all had theatrical experience, but none learned ballroom. Len was worried that the show would “take the rise” out of the discipline he loved, destroying his reputation.

He had to violate a deal to judge the Blackpool championships, which overlapped with the first TV broadcast, in order to participate. Not only was the BBC taking a huge risk, but Goodman knew he would never be asked again.

‘No sizzle, no sausage.’
He thought that the best thing to do was to simply be himself. In his first performance, he used one of his grandfather’s favorite words, “all sausage and no sizzle,” and quickly settled in.

His astute remarks wowed the audience. “It’s a gorgeous rise and fall, up and down like a bride’s nightie,” he said to one apprehensive competitor. “You’re like a trifle – fruity on top, spongy on the bottom,” he said to another.

He was a teacher at heart, and he was ready to offer sound counsel. Jason Wood, one of the show’s first bold celebrities, learned Goodman had a sharp tongue. “Wood by name, nature by nature,” he explained.

With millions watching, the show was taken up by the Americans. Tonioli was contracted by ABC to appear on the relaunched Dancing with the Stars alongside two US judges, only for history to repeat itself.

One of the ABC’s choices did not fare well in the pilot program. Goodman was put on a plane to Los Angeles with only 24 hours’ notice.

He traveled the Ocean twice a week for more than a decade, serving as top judge on both shows at the same time. When in Los Angeles, he shared an apartment complex with Tonioli, with Bruno cooking and Len ironing.

Goodman’s innate charm was so effective on camera that he was offered additional presenting opportunities. Partners in Rhyme, a BBC game program, was even short-lived.

Yet, in his 70s, he concluded that the constant flying back and forth was too much for him. He quit Strictly Come Dancing in 2016 with mixed feelings to focus on the (much better paid) ABC version.

He then departed the American show in 2022 to “spend more time with my grandchildren and family” in the UK.

Len Goodman rose to international prominence late in his career. When it did, he had been hidden long enough for it not to bother him.

He was never a world-class dancer, but his easygoing personality made him a natural TV entertainer.

None of it was work for the ex-welder. “Work was something you didn’t like doing,” he insisted.

“Have you heard the expression I could have danced for joy?” he once wrote. “Oh, I have and continue to do.”