Len Goodman, a long-serving choose on “Dancing with the Stars” and “Strictly Come Dancing” who helped revive curiosity in ballroom dancing on each side of the Atlantic, has died, his agent stated Monday. He was 78.
Agent Jackie Gill stated Goodman “handed away peacefully.” He had been recognized with bone most cancers.
A former skilled ballroom dancer and British champion, Goodman was head choose on “Strictly Come Dancing” for 12 years from its launch on the BBC in 2004. The dance competitors, which pairs celebrities with skilled dance companions, was a shock hit and has grow to be one of many community’s hottest reveals.
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Goodman’s pithy observations, delivered in a Cockney accent, endeared him to viewers. “You floated throughout that flooring like butter on a crumpet,” he remarked after one foxtrot. He praised a salsa-dancing couple as “like two scorching sausages on a barbecue.”
Goodman was head choose on the U.S. model of the present, ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” for 15 years till his retirement in November. For a number of years he judged the British and American reveals concurrently every autumn, criss-crossing the Atlantic weekly.
British broadcaster Esther Rantzen stated Goodman had been “astonished and delighted” by his late-life fame.
“One of many causes he succeeded so effectively within the States is that he was quintessentially British,” she stated. “He was agency however truthful, humorous however a gentleman and I hope the nation will undertake his favourite expostulation of ‘pickle me walnuts.'”
Goodman additionally offered BBC radio applications and made TV documentaries, together with a 2012 program in regards to the sinking of the Titanic. As a younger man, Goodman had labored as a shipyard welder for the corporate that constructed the doomed ship.
BBC director-general Tim Davie stated Goodman was “an exquisite, heat entertainer who was adored by tens of millions. He appealed to all ages and felt like a member of everybody’s household. Len was on the very coronary heart of Strictly’s success. He can be vastly missed by the general public and his many family and friends.”
Goodman was additionally a recipient of the Carl Alan Award in recognition of excellent contributions to bop, and owned the Goodman Academy dance faculty in southern England.
His retirement announcement sparked reward from his fellow judges with host Tyra Banks referred to as him a “legend.” Most of the skilled dancers on the present, together with co-judge Derek Hough, had their dancing judged by Goodman after they had been youngsters, Banks stated.
“You’ve got impressed generations of dancers across the whole globe by means of your ardour and thru your experience and thru laser-focused eye,” Banks stated. “And they will keep on that dedication to excellence endlessly.”
