How Len Goodman's first wife waltzed away
How Len Goodman’s first wife waltzed away: After his tragic death, the Strictly judge’s colourful love life as told in his memoir… including the dancer who was stolen by a suave French seducer
It was Len Goodman’s third time lucky finding love with Sue Barrett in 2012.
He previously had had a long-term relationship with Lesley, with whom he had a son, James Goodman, 42.
With his first wife Cherry Kingston he shared the love of ballroom and together they danced perfectly in step.
But then, as he revealed to the Mail in 2008, a suave French seducer sashayed on to the scene…
The La Costa golf resort, south of Los Angeles. I was wandering around, looking for somewhere to buy breakfast, when a man came up to me.
‘You’re the guy on that dance show, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘Guilty,’ I replied.
Len Goodman pictured dancing with his first wife Cherry Kingston
Len Goodman pictured with his second partner Lesley
READ MORE: I’m no goody two shoes! Len Goodman’s twinkly-eyed charm and eccentric wit made him a natural TV idol. But his humble beginnings as a barrow-boy were a world away from his showbiz persona, as he revealed to the Mail in a rollicking series
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The American version of Strictly Come Dancing was proving every bit as successful as the BBC original.
‘We love that show, my wife and I watch you every week,’ said the stranger.
‘We think you’re great. Len, I’m Gary Beckner, I look after corporate sponsorship for golf events.
Would you come and have breakfast with us in the players’ private dining room?’
I followed him in and suddenly I saw Tiger.
Woods, eating breakfast, alone at a table. ‘Tiger,’ said Gary, ‘do you watch Dancing With The Stars?’ ‘No, but Elin, my wife, watches it all the time.’
‘Well, this is Len Goodman, the head judge from that show.’ ‘Len, won’t you sit down?’ asked Tiger, greet- ing me like an old friend. ‘Wanna join me for breakfast?’
He didn’t need to ask twice. And as I chatted with probably the greatest golfer of all time, I kept asking myself: ‘How the hell does this happen to a dance teacher from Dartford?’ The truth is, I’ve been lucky.
But just like the waltz, life has its own rhythm of rise and fall. Yes, I’ve enjoyed the rise — but my goodness, I certainly know a bit about the falls.
My first marriage, for instance, to my dance partner, Cherry, ended in tears. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been warned.
Len Goodman pictured dancing with his first wife, Cherry
Len Goodman, pictured with his wife Sue Barrett on New Bond Street in London in March 2010
The day I told my father that Cherry and I were getting married, he told me one of his little homilies.
‘Len, imagine that inside of you are maybe ten metronomes that tick,’ he said.
‘You’ve got a hobby metronome that takes care of your interests outside of work; there might be a country walks metronome or maybe even a poetry metronome.’
Crikey, I thought. I like my dad’s bits of homespun wisdom, but where’s he going with this one?
‘Of course, Len, you’ve also got a sex metronome.
Now, the ideal partner is one whose metronome ticks in time with yours.
‘You love going out to dinner, she loves going out to dinner.
When you make love, she loves it, you love it. Your ideal partner is one where all ten metronomes tick in time.
‘Now imagine you’re with someone who is virtually perfect, except that you love poetry and she doesn’t; so your little poetry metronome is hardly ticking.
Every day you go to work on the train and most days you’re reading a poetry book.
‘One day a woman gets on the train, sits opposite you and takes out a book of Robert Browning’s poems.
You tell her how much you love poetry and especially Browning and suddenly you’re in conversation with the woman.
‘You start seeing her on the train regularly and the talk is all poetry and that one metronome, the one that’s been starved for so long, is ticking off the scale.
Next thing, you leave your wife, who is perfect in every other way.
‘The fact is, Len, it’s just one metronome out of the ten. Be careful not to get things out of kilter.’
Wise words.
Len pictured on Dancing With the Stars
Len Goodman and his son James
Cherry and I got married on April 27, 1972, two days after my 28th birthday.
With the clarity of hindsight, I realise now that life sometimes fires warning shots across your bow, but at the time I was just caught up in the flow of things, and carried on regardless.
Two weeks to the day before our wedding, my father had a massive heart attack and had a quadruple bypass. I should have taken this as warning number one: postpone the wedding.
But things were too far gone with all the preparations, and I felt a huge pressure to carry on from Cherry and her mother, Joy.
Three days before the ceremony, we all went to the church for a dress rehearsal, and everything seemed to be going well until the vicar dropped an unintentional bombshell.
‘Have the banns been seen to?’
Always the joker, I shot back: ‘We don’t want a band, thank you, an organ will do nicely.’ The vicar didn’t look amused.
The banns, he explained, should have been read for the previous three weeks in church. It was, he told me, a legal requirement.
‘Well, no, er, I guess I didn’t arrange that.’ I was aghast — as was Cherry and everyone else. They all turned to look at me as if I was a complete idiot. But
I had never heard of banns before — it was all totally new information to me.
Len Goodman at a golf event last summer at Brocket Hall (left) and with his grandson Jack, (right)
Len Goodman, pictured in April 2015, announced his retirement from TV six months ago
‘I’m afraid the ceremony cannot go ahead,’ said the vicar.
The only way round it, he told us, was to go to Canterbury and get a special licence from the Archbishop.
With three days to go before the big day, it was a pressure I didn’t need.
I spent hours on the phone sorting everything out. And then I had a call from the hotel where we were holding the reception.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Goodman, but I’m afraid our kitchen has caught fire and we’re going to have to move your reception.
But don’t worry, we’ve arranged for it to be held at Bickley Manor in Bromley.’ Now apart from the fact that this was ten miles away, I’d heard that it was a nice place so that was no big deal. But it was another one of those warning shots.
Finally, the day arrived.
On the way to the church I stopped at the hospital to visit Dad. ‘Are you sure you’re making the right decision getting married, Len?’ Another warning.
‘Yes,’ I said, but really I was thinking I don’t know.
The trouble with dancing marriages is that you and your partner spend so much time practising and competing, you don’t get an opportunity to meet other people of the opposite sex.
Len Goodman is seen on his 11th birthday in a jumper he said was knitted by his grandmother
Len pictured with his son James and father Leonard
Anyway, it was too late to turn back now.
The ceremony itself went well.
Cherry looked absolutely lovely, and after the photographs we all went to Bickley Manor.
The starters had just been put in front of everyone when the maître d’ came over and whispered that I needed to take a call from the hospital.
My father had had a relapse and was not expected to make it through the night. I explained to Cherry and the guests that I had to go.
I spent the night at the hospital and when I got back Cherry somehow blamed me for leaving.
To be honest, I don’t think she ever forgave me for messing up the wedding. But what could I do? As it happens, Dad improved and was soon out of danger.
Professionally, it must be said, our life together went well.
We opened a dance studio, were winning big competitions and being paid well for demonstrations.
But many dance marriages split up because one day you look across at the person you’re with and realise you’ve got nothing else in common — there are not enough metronomes ticking. That’s exactly what happened to Cherry and me.
Every year, Cherry and I went on holiday to Monte Carlo with our great friends Benny and Sylvie, both dancers. In 1977, we spent the summer there, enjoying lazy days on the beach and evenings in restaurants and going to the casino.
One evening, while in the casino having a drink, we struck up a conversation with an olive-skinned, handsome, wealthy Parisian named Michel.
Len pictured on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010
A couple of evenings later, I went off to play blackjack. When I finished, I wandered back to where Cherry and Michel were sitting having a chat.
‘Michel has got us two tickets to see Manhattan Transfer tomorrow night,’ said Cherry.
I was delighted. I loved the group, and we had a wonderful evening.
When I thanked Michel the next day, he graciously offered to take us all to dinner at the Café de Paris in the square.
We had champagne, beautiful food, brandies afterwards — it was a fabulous night. What a generous man, I thought.
However, something I ate didn’t agree with me and the next day and evening I stayed at the apartment while the others went out.
Cherry arrived back at about 2am.
She told me that she, Sylvie and Benny had been to a disco.
For the last few days of the holiday I spent most of the day at the beach on my own.
Cherry regularly went off into town to go shopping, which was most unlike her as we usually spent our days all together, sunbathing and chatting.
All too soon we were heading home, and not long after we got back I was due to leave for Johannesburg to judge a competition.
One day, before I headed off, Cherry said we’d had a call from the owner of a dance studio we knew, in Paris, who wanted us to do some teaching.
The dates coincided with my trip to Johannesburg so I suggested Cherry went without me. She headed off there, said that it went well and that she was going to see him again, and sell him some of her old dresses so his pupils could wear them.
So in a few days Cherry went off to Paris, with a car full of dresses. She took her mum, too.
The day after Cherry left, Benny called me. Sylvie had told him something he needed to tell me.
‘Len, Cherry has gone to Paris to meet Michel, the Frenchman from Monte Carlo,’ he said. ‘She’s introducing him to her mother.
She’s going to leave you for him.’
I was speechless — furious with Cherry, and with myself for being so naive. I was so hurt — hurt that she had done it, hurt by the way I found out and hurt that she had gone over to France behind my back.
With hindsight I knew that ours was a dancing marriage, one that lacked that spark of real love, but that didn’t stop me being angry.
Our house was about a mile from Cherry’s mum’s bungalow. Over the next two days I took everything of Cherry’s that I could possibly think of — all of her clothes, jewellery, records, a nest of tables her mother had given her, and laid everything out neatly on her mother’s front lawn.
I then had the locks changed on our house and put a note through Joy’s front door. It just said: ‘Don’t come back, I know everything.’
Then I packed a suitcase of my own, got in my car and went off to the Lake District for two weeks to a rather lovely hotel on Lake Windermere.
When I got back, there was a letter from a solicitor saying Cherry was starting divorce proceedings.
What upset me most was that she left me for a multi-millionaire, but she asked for our savings.
Of course, she was entitled to her share, but all I could think about was how it would wipe me out for quite a while.
About three years later, I was walking through Bexley Heath when I bumped into Cherry for the first time since she went off to Paris.
We went for a coffee.
I had no anger left, in fact it was lovely to see her.
She was really happy, with two kids.
After we’d talked for a while I just blurted it out.
‘The one thing that really got to me was the fact that you cleaned me out when you went off with your multi-millionaire French bloke,’ I told her.
Three days later a cheque arrived from Cherry with an apology.
I was so glad, not for the money, which was nice, but because it put a full stop on that chapter of my life.
Luckily, I wasn’t lonely for long.
One of my regular hangouts became a pub called The Fox And Hounds, just outside Dartford.
I would often pop down there after work, and one evening I went in and met a very attractive girl whose name was Lesley, from the Isle of Wight. We got chatting and it became clear we were like chalk and cheese.
I am a scatterbrain, always up for a lark, whereas she was quiet, sensible and about to start training to become a nurse.
But she was very good looking, so despite our differences, I took her out and we hit it off from the first date.
One date led to another and then the strangest thing happened to me — something that had never happened before. I fell in love with her .
Luckily, Lesley felt the same way about me and decided to give up nursing and live with me and help me run the dance school — which was great, because she was full of ideas.
Things rolled along pretty nicely for a year until out of the blue Lesley dropped a bombshell. She was pregnant! My initial reaction was a mixture of disbelief and uncertainty.
Was this what I wanted? I was 36 and quite happy with my life and wasn’t at all sure I wanted the responsibility.
That changed almost instantly when, at 9.25pm on Monday, January 26, 1981, James William Goodman came into the world. To say I was overjoyed is an understatement.
I couldn’t stop smiling or gazing at him.
I was so proud.
Meanwhile, the dance school was doing really well, thanks to Lesley — and John Travolta.
After Saturday Night Fever came out, everyone wanted to dance like him. Encouraged by Lesley, I offered classes which were hugely popular.
Business really took off. Lesley had a lot of drive, and while that was a good thing, there was also a downside. She didn’t feel very comfortable living in the home that Cherry and I had once shared and was determined that we should move.
I wasn’t so happy about it, but I reluctantly agreed that if she found somewhere nice then we would move. Before long, Lesley announced she had found the perfect place: a gorgeous cottage in a tiny Kentish hamlet, with two acres of garden and 14 acres of woods.
As soon as I saw it I fell in love with it. Life, however, was not as happy as it should have been.
I was working very hard at the dance school and travelling all over the world as a competition judge.
Even when I was here, I was often not getting home until ten o’clock and the last thing I wanted was a conversation, as I’d spent the whole day talking. Lesley hated it.
I kept telling myself, and Lesley, that I had to work while it was available, but looking back I should have eased up a bit.
There was another problem in that Lesley was feeling increasingly isolated, living down a country lane with virtually no neighbours.
The rural dream turned into something of nightmare.
We sold up, but lost thousands in the process, and our relationship continued to deteriorate. The more I worked, the more we rowed.
Sadly, it came to a point where being with Lesley was just impossible for me, and she couldn’t stand being with me, either.
We were always arguing, which is no environment to bring up a child.
It was just history repeating itself, because I’d grown up in similar circumstances and had some idea of how difficult it could be.
Lesley moved back to the Isle of Wight and 12-year-old James went with her .
It was a low point in my life, because while I was happy to be free of the arguments, I was nearly 50, stony broke and missed James desperately.
Several years later, I found myself spending a lot of time at my golf club and it was there that I bumped into a dance teacher from Essex, called Sue, who was having lunch in the clubhouse.
I needed someone to help me at my school, so I offered her a job.
Sue was brilliant — and I fell for her.
It’s a funny old world and sometimes things come along when you’re least expecting it, which is exactly what happened to us.
Maybe it’s a bit on the late side, but thanks to Sue my life is finally complete.
My dad passed away in 1996 and my mum four years later. Probably my greatest regret is that they never got to see their little Lenny on the telly — they would have been so proud.
Being a judge on Strictly is pure pleasure for me. I suspect the BBC expected me to be fairly dry in my comments but I enjoy being able to come out with all my funny little sayings.
I say things like: ‘Lovely rise and fall, up and down like a bride’s nightie.’ Or: ‘You’re just like a trifle, fruity up the top but a little bit spongy down below.’
And then there’s my trademark: ‘All sizzle, no sausage’ comment — which I use to describe all flash and no substance.
You have to speak your mind, but without being cruel. One of my only regrets is what happened with Kelly Brook and Brendan Cole in 2007.
On week eight, I gave them a hard time, particularly Brendan, saying: ‘This girl is so talented and you haven’t given her a routine good enough for a girl of her standard.’
I had no doubts that the following week they would come back stronger and it would allow me to say I’d been hard, but was happy they’d come back so much better. But Kelly’s father passed away and she withdrew from the competition.
I felt awkward about what happened and I’m sure Brendan has felt some animosity towards me.
I also had a bit of a falling out with him when I voted off Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones above EastEnders actor Matt Di Angelo.
As the show finished, Brendan Cole walked past me and said: ‘You a***hole.’
‘What did you say?’
I asked him.
But he just kept on walking. ‘Oi, what the bleedin’ hell did you say?’ I shouted.
I caught up with him and said: ‘Who the hell are you calling an a***hole?’
‘You!’ he answered.
At that moment Claire Callaghan, the producer, along with several other people came along and Brendan walked off.
I explained what had happened and headed back to my dressing room, upset.
Sue was there, which was a good thing because she calmed me down. At that moment there was a knock on my dressing room door. It was Brendan, who apologised to me.
One thing my dad always said to me was: ‘If someone is big enough to apologise, you be big enough to accept it.’
So we made up. It’s been an incredible journey from sitting atop my granddad’s fruit and vegetable barrow in Bethnal Green to sitting at the breakfast table of Tiger Woods.
Everyone has heard the expression ‘I could have danced for joy’ — well, I have and still do.
As I said earlier, there have been some lows, but I’ve been far luckier than most because there’s been a lot more rise than fall.
And there’s no sign of the excitement stopping — there’s still a lot of sizzle left in this old sausage.
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