12 October 2023 , 17:00
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Laid-back Strictly Come Dancing judge Anton Du Beke has revealed he was consumed by rage until he joined the hit BBC1 show.
The former professional dancer said he was so driven to succeed that he had no time for relationships and that his anger left him hating everybody.
These days, popular Anton is known for his easy-going and relaxed manner, but he admitted: “I was a lunatic at 26. I was so driven and determined, it was almost destructive. I’d get frustrated and so angry all the time and I hated everybody. I just wanted to beat everybody. It was a really competitive world. I didn’t want to be your friend, no interest in that at all. I wanted to beat you really badly, I wanted to beat you a lot.”
Anton Du Beke admits he 'hated everybody' before he joined Strictly Come Dancing (Adam Gerrard / Sunday Mirror)
Anton joined the show as a professional dancer in 2004 (BBC/Guy Levy)Speaking to Loose Women star Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast (which airs Friday 13 October), he added: “I didn’t have time for relationships. I couldn’t be doing with any of that, it was a distraction. What did they used to say with boxers - hanky-panky the night before a big fight weakens the legs.
“I didn’t have time to devote to anything. I had to practice. Because if I wasn’t doing it, there’d be somebody somewhere practising, or having a lesson and I was at the pictures smooching. Winning was everything.”
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Anton, 57, joined Strictly in its first series in 2004 and is now glad that he was one of the older professional dancers. “Strictly come Dancing for me at 26 as opposed to 36 would have been a disaster,” he said. “I was a complete lunatic and an idiot.”
In the new podcast interview he said that his anger disappeared once he realised that the show was more about the celebrity dancers than the professionals. “I’m this competitive guy, eyeballs out, everything at 100 miles an hour and then I walk into the studio with Lesley Garrett on day 1 for rehearsal and the winning wasn’t important to me,” he said. “I’d like to have won it, but it wasn’t important because it wasn’t about me.”
Anton, who joined the judging panel in 2021 alongside Shirley Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood and Motsi Mabuse, added: “I’m still fiercely determined, nothing has changed in that regard, but the frustration is not there.”
In 2021, Anton became a judge on the BBC dancing competition (BBC/Guy Levy)The ballroom star, who has six year-old twins George and Henrietta with wife Hannah, revealed that fatherhood had also changed his life. He said: “I met Hannah and having children was something that we both wanted to do, even though we were a bit older. It’s the most brilliant thing that we’ve done and the most brilliant thing I will ever do. I love every second of it. One of my favourite things in the world is brushing my daughter’s hair.”
Anton said he was determined that his difficult childhood would not hold him back. His father Antal had problems with alcoholism and was violent and Anton once spent three days in hospital after his father stabbed him in the leg and stomach.
He told Kaye Adams: “I had demons on my shoulders. When I used to compete, I used to think that everybody else had had it easier than me. But they all had their demons, so there’s no point in complaining. For me it was only ever about moving forward. I had no desire for anything to define me, because I knew what I wanted to do.
“All this other stuff was just noise. It wasn’t shaping me in any way, it was just in the way, it was just a bit of a pain. The past is the past. I don’t want anything in the past to spoil what might happen in the future. I thought that would be a shame, because it’s nothing to do with you anyway, it was somebody else’s actions and behaviour, not mine."