18 January 2024 , 21:44
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Angela Rippon says Strictly has “scratched that itch” she had to be a dancer, while also proving that age should not be a barrier to following your dreams.
Rather than taking a rest after a busy end to 2023, the 79-year-old has been in rehearsals this month and is going out on the road with the hit BBC show.
Ahead of the start of the Strictly tour, the TV presenter said: “I suppose the thing I’m looking forward to most is the fact that I can keep dancing. I stopped going to dance classes when I was 17. I stopped because I had to knuckle down to my O-levels. I’ve only done sort of party tricks since.
“Doing Strictly for five months reawakened in me how much I love to dance. And to have the chance to do something I haven’t done for 60 years, I’ve just enjoyed so much. When they invited me on tour, I thought, ‘If I can go on dancing for a few more weeks, that’s what I’m going to do’. There’s a stereotype that when you get to my age you just stop... and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Angela, centre, with from left, Nancy Xu, Angela Scanlon, Ellie Leach and Annabel Croft (PA)“I’ve had people stop me in the street and say, ‘You’ve inspired me. I’m taking up Pilates now’. Or, ‘My wife and I are going to do ballroom lessons every week’. The fact that doing what I’m doing has inspired others to think they can try something new, that’s great.”
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Angela, the eighth star voted off the recent Strictly series alongside her dance partner Kai Widdrington, 28, added: “From when they asked me to do [the tour], I mentioned it to Kai and he said, ‘You’ve got to do it’.
“His description was, ‘You will never hear anything quite like the sound of an arena’. I think the biggest audience I’ve ever done anything live to is about 3,000 when I’ve chaired conferences. Or when I did Eurovision, because that’s how many were in the auditorium. The [TV] audience was 186 million, but you never see them. And all the outside broadcasts I’ve done where there’s like 23 million, 26 million people watching... But to be in an arena where there will be more than 10,000 people is just incredible.”
Co-hosting coverage of the election on BBC in 1979 (Daily Mirror)Angela said another of the Strictly pro dancers, Neil Jones, has found a chilly way for them to reduce the risk of injury on tour. In places such as Glasgow, Newcastle and Liverpool, the pair will be plunging to temperatures even colder than the ones outside.
Angela said: “I’ll be keeping up my cryotherapy which I started during the series. Neil and I are very keen cryotherapy advocates. He’s located as many [cryotherapy venues] as he can in the cities we’re going to... That and retail therapy will keep me going.
“I found during the show that the more cryotherapy I did the less I needed to rely on ibuprofen and Voltarol. It really does keep the aches and pains at bay.” She added: “I didn’t become a dancer because 60 years ago there was never the option really. But it makes you think... do I wish that at some point I’d said, ‘I can always go back to being a reporter. I want to dance’? And I’m doing it now. I don’t care how late it’s come in my career. I’m loving it. So many people go through life with a ‘what-if’ moment – through Strictly now I get to scratch that itch.”
She added: “I feel in the best shape of my life. I’ve lost about a stone from when I started the show.”
The line-up at the Strictly tour launch in Birmingham (Dave Hogan/Hogan Media/REX/Shutterstock)Angela, whose career includes fronting the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News from 1976 to 1981 as well as Come Dancing in the 80s and 90s, told fans to expect the unexpected on the tour, which is also due to feature the likes of Ellie Leach, Nancy Xu, Annabel Croft, Angela Scanlon, Bobby Brazier and Dianne Buswell. Angela said: “The tour is going to be like Strictly unleashed because of some of the things we’re doing.
“It’s got that feel that we... don’t have the pressure of the main show – [there’s a] lovely freedom of being able to perform for the joy of it.
“You’ll have to wait and see if minx Angela comes out. It’s fun because suddenly you feel there’s not that same intensity of, ‘oh, God, it’s got to be perfect because I’ve got to get a good vote from the judges’. No, it’s to go out there and entertain 10,000-plus people.
“It’s a different feeling entirely. It’s like a rock concert. The 17-year-old me who would love to have been a professional dancer, she’s been 60 years in the wings, waiting patiently. Now I’m unleashing her. In my head I’m still only 30. I really am having the time of my life.”
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- Strictly Come Dancing the Live Tour, from today to February 11. Go to StrictlyComeDancingLive.com.