Craig Revel Horwood has shared a moving insight into the journey that took him from a dance school in Australia to the Strictly Come Dancing judging panel.
The notoriously sharp-tongued judge showed his softer side as he opened up about his story on tonight’s episode of It Takes Two, revealing that he first started dancing as a young boy in Ballarat, Australia, as he “hated” sport and felt like an “outcast”.
“I just did not fit in at all,” Revel Horwood explained. “I didn’t like sport at school, in fact I hated it, and a kid in Australia that doesn’t like sport is a social misfit and outcast. That’s why I went to the dance classes.”
“People were telling me that I was good at it and it was the first thing that I’d ever been any good at,” he added.
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The classes helped him feel “part of a community that understood and didn’t judge me,” Revel Horwood explained.
“Where I grew up, it was not acceptable to be even slightly effeminate. I wanted to be a dancer and that was not acceptable.”
Keen to leave his hometown behind “as soon as possible”, dance became “an escape route” for the star, who decided to train in Melbourne and funded his studies by working as a hairdresser, after studying books on the subject from the library.
He became a professional dancer, appearing in shows like West Side Story and Cats, before eventually becoming a choreographer, working on the West End production of Miss Saigon at the request of theatre powerhouse Cameron Mackintosh.
Revel Horwood joked that he ended up “having too many arguments with my directors about how I thought [the shows] should go, so I thought the only way to solve that is to direct and choreograph myself.”
It was his West End show Beautiful and Damned that eventually caught the attention of Strictly’s producers, who “had seen [the] poster” and decided to “ring” up Revel Horwood.
“And that’s how I got my job at the BBC on a new programme called Strictly Come Dancing,” he said.
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Looking back on his childhood, he added: “The best thing I ever told myself when I was a kid was follow your dreams and never give that up. Follow your passion and you will be successful – and if you’re not, dust yourself off darling and try it again, because only through failure do we find success.”
Revel Horwood joined Strictly Come Dancing as a judge when the first season of the show aired in 2004, appearing alongside Arlene Phillips, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli, and is now the longest-serving member of the show’s panel.
He has also judged versions of Dancing With the Stars in New Zealand and in his home country Australia.
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