She outraged Mary Whitehouse, worked with Tina Turner, Elton John and Freddie Mercury, and is up for an Olivier for choreographing a smash hit production of Guys & Dolls. Will she ever slow down? Not likely ...
She outraged Mary Whitehouse, worked with Tina Turner, Elton John and Freddie Mercury, and is up for an Olivier for choreographing a smash hit production of Guys & Dolls. Will she ever slow down? Not likely ...ot long ago, trying to book Arlene Phillips in for a check-up, a nurse was trying to find a date she could make. “I said: ‘I’m sorry – I’m working.’ He said: ‘Well, it says here you’re 80. What are you doing working?’” She told him she had never given it much thought.
I think it’s this constantly searching for the new, and surrounding herself with young people, that makes Phillips seem so youthful. How does she keep current and ahead of dance trends? Can she be going to clubs to see what the cool kids are up to? I’m nearly half her age and the thought exhausts me – I question, also, whether I should use the phrase “cool kids”. Does she keep on top of TikTok? She does, she says, and she has colleagues who bring new ideas.
When Phillips was 15, her mother died from leukaemia. Her father became ill around the same time and Phillips, the middle of three, felt responsible for the family, especially her sister. “My brother left school to get a job,” she says. “It was really tough, and counselling was unheard of. There was no: ‘Let’s stop and find out how we can help this family.
I’ve heard her say in the past that she was never the best dancer, but transformed herself through sheer grit. “I don’t really have a dancer’s body,” she says now. “I’m quite short and stocky. Strength was my fortitude – I could jump as high as the boys, spin faster, solid moves. But in terms of a beautiful classically perfect body suitable for ballet, I was so far away.” Did it leave her with lasting body image issues? “Yeah, I felt like my body was all wrong, I was all wrong.
Mary Whitehouse, the morality campaigner, was outraged. Does she have any sympathy with Whitehouse now? Did Hot Gossip open the floodgates for skimpy clothing and sexy moves? Phillips says she was always more concerned about the level of violence in pop culture, rather than sex, and it was important to her that the women in the group were empowered. “They were young people who knew what they wanted to do,” she says.
By the time Phillips was made a judge on Strictly – she and Len Goodman were the first to be cast – she was in her 60s and had already had a stellar career. When she was the only judge not to have her contract renewed four years later, it caused uproar among Strictly fans who couldn’t understand why the accomplished judge – and only woman – was being replaced with the much younger, far less experienced pop star Alesha Dixon.