Denise blasts back! Lloyd Webber betrayed her, Johnny Vaughan sabotaged her career, and as for anyone who says it's a fix that she's on Strictly...
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Fighting talk: Denise Van Outen hits back at critics
There have been criticisms throughout the years of Strictly Come Dancing contestants coming into the show with an unfair advantage, but rarely more so than those directed at one of this year’s favourites, Denise Van Outen.
It’s her experience on the West End musical stage — she starred in Chicago, among other major shows — that puts her ahead, say viewers, giving her a practised style that her clumsier rivals could never hope to match.
Van Outen has decided to confront her critics head-on, pointing out that not only did she have a dangerous wobble last week, when, instead of being ranked in the top three as usual, she found herself in the bottom-two dance-off, and she is by no means the only surviving contestant with showbusiness credentials.
‘Dani Harmer went to stage school. She is half my age so attended more recently. Lisa Riley went to theatre school, so did Kimberley Walsh. And Fern Britton did the Strictly Christmas Special before doing the show.
‘I went to a dance school when I was a child to do ballet, tap and modern, but I haven’t danced since then. I have never partner-danced in my life. It is a rule on Strictly that you are not allowed to take part if you have had any previous Latin or ballroom lessons. They are very strict about that.
‘As for people who think I danced all the way through Chicago, well, if they had seen the show, they’d know I played Roxie Hart, who doesn’t have the dancing part, she just does one number at the end with a hat and cane. Because I have done West End shows people think of me as being an all-singing, all-dancing, all-round entertainer.
‘But Tell Me On A Sunday, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show, is all song. In Rent I didn’t dance, and there was no dancing in Legally Blonde. So I do feel it is a little bit unfair. What I do on a Saturday night is a result of putting in so many hours of training.
‘James [Jordan], my professional dance partner, always sticks up for me because he knows I really do struggle with it. It’s just that I won’t give up until I get it right. It’s so technical I find it hard to pick up. I end up treading on James’s toes and getting my arms all twisted.
‘The key to doing a good dance is to make it look comfortable and easy and effortless. On Monday and Tuesday it is always a bit of a car crash, on Wednesday the steps start to sink in and on Thursday we will rehearse sometimes from 10am to 10pm.
‘We all say it would be lovely to be in the final and have the opportunity to win. But I understand it is a TV show, a popularity contest. So I don’t mind about not winning. To me it is not about that, it is about enjoying the dancing. I don’t know how I am coming across on camera.’
In person you can sense her determination. It’s something that Denise, who has grown up in the public eye, has developed as part of her armour. She was born in Basildon, Essex, to working-class parents who had moved from the slums of London’s East End. She inherited their accent and search for betterment.
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No advantage: Denise Van Outen, with partner James Jordan, blasts critics who says she has an unfair advantage on Strictly due to her West End past saying many other contestants have showbiz backgrounds
She began acting professionally at the age of 12 (helping finance her fees at London’s Sylvia Young Theatre School) and became famous at the age of 24 co-presenting Channel 4’s Big Breakfast with Johnny Vaughan.
In the late Nineties, Denise was bunched together with her presenter and DJ pals Zoe Ball and Sara Cox as ‘ladettes’, known for their hard drinking and partying. According to her now, that was all a bit of a myth, at least in her case.
‘When I started on the Big Breakfast I wanted to be cool and a bit risque and a bit different. I did all my growing up on TV. This perception that I was this mad party girl was simply untrue.
‘For the four years I worked on Big Breakfast I was in bed every night at 7pm or 8pm because I had to be up for 3.45am to do my show. So I wasn’t going out partying. Our party was on camera. That was our social time, which is why the show was so vibrant and buzzy.’
Times move on and Ball, Cox and van Outen are now all mums. ‘I saw Sara at Strictly the other week and she was saying: “Oh, I’ve got to go, I’ve got to get back to the kids.” You grow up, don’t you? I had a pop star boyfriend, Jay Kay (from Jamiroquai), and I was doing the coolest show on Channel 4. When you’re young that’s what you do, you show off.’
As a child she wanted to be anything but cool. Her ambition was to be an all-round entertainer. ‘I loved watching Bruce Forsyth, Cilla, Bob Monkhouse. I grew up watching those Saturday night shows.’
She never quite became the new Cilla, though she was a Saturday night fixture for a few years as a judge on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s BBC1 talent search shows Any Dream Will Do in 2007 and I’d Do Anything in 2008.
Novice ballroomer: Denise says she has no advantage in the competition as she has never danced with a partner before
She had a turbulent year in 2008, reuniting in January with her former Big Breakfast colleague Johnny Vaughan on his Capital FM breakfast show.
‘Johnny didn’t really welcome me with open arms, in fact he made me feel very uncomfortable. He wouldn’t let me speak, would tell me when I should and shouldn’t speak and would also constantly not mention that we were joint presenters. It was always: “This is Johnny Vaughan, you are listening to Capital Radio,” and there was no mention of my name. I was on the other side of the desk. He had control of the desk and when I would go to speak he would fade my microphone down.
‘At the time I was a judge on I’d Do Anything. It was a very popular show but he said that I was not allowed to mention it on the radio because he didn’t watch it, even though we were getting loads of calls and texts about it.’
She resigned from Capital after six months when she was only half way into her contract, feeling stressed and concerned about keeping her relationship with her new boyfriend Lee Mead on track.
As Lee worked in the theatre and didn’t get home until late and she had to rise early, they barely saw each other. They had fallen in love and wanted a baby.
Lee had won Any Dream Will Do and with it the lead role in a new stage production of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
They had kept their distance while on the TV show, getting together three months after it ended. The couple married in April 2009 and their daughter Betsy, now two-and-a-half, was born in May 2010.
While she was pregnant, Denise was expected to join Andrew Lloyd Webber in another TV talent show, Over The Rainbow — the search for Dorothy in a new production of The Wizard Of Oz. Normally relaxed and ready to chat about most subjects, she finds this a difficult topic. She had been close to Lloyd Webber ever since he chose her to star in a revival of his hit one-woman show Tell Me On A Sunday in 2003. But when, at the last minute, she was told she would not, after all, be a judge on Over The Rainbow, it put a strain on their friendship.
Upset: Denise says she felt betrayed by Andrew Lloyd Webber when she found out she had been ousted from the judging panel on Over The Rainbow
‘I was sent all the filming days and three days before I was set to start I found out through a journalist that I was no longer part of the show. A press release had already gone out.’
It said because it was a new show, there was to be a new line-up.
‘I was obviously upset. Andrew was involved, he was part of the decision,’ she says. She believes it was because she was pregnant, although the BBC deny this.
‘I was upset because at that time Dannii Minogue, who was a judge on The X Factor, was pregnant as well and they just got stand-in judges. That was what I suggested. I would have missed at most only one show. I felt a little bit cheated because I loved the shows.
‘I’d met my husband through one of the shows and here we were having a child together. It felt unfair. I was upset at the time, but I am not bothered by it at all now.’
She has patched up her difficulties with Lloyd Webber and says they are friends. ‘We still speak and he has invited me round to his house.’
After her daughter was born she took six months off before going back to the West End in Legally Blonde. It was tougher than she expected.
‘Motherhood was a massive shock. I tried to do everything myself — you think you can, and then you realise you need help from grandparents and friends. I was exhausted. I had a teething baby, I was doing eight shows a week and I didn’t have a nanny.
‘We had child care in the evenings, but at that time the baby had effectively gone to bed. I was with her all day on my own, so by the time I left to go to the show I was already exhausted. I was surviving on five hours’ sleep a night.’
She has since worked things out with the help of a babysitting friend and careful diary juggling between her and Lee.
Sabotage: When Denise returned to Johnny Vaughan's side in 2008 he wouldn't let her speak and refused to allow her to mention her role as a judge on I'd Do Anything
She is now 38 and has reached the point where she says she can ease up on her career, though there are scant outward signs of this.
‘I am very lucky that I have done most of the things that I wanted to do, so anything I do now is a bonus. I do it for fun. Strictly, for me, is purely for the fun element. I’m half as stressed as I used to be.
‘When I go to bed at night I worry about things like: “Have I put out my daughter’s food all ready for nursery?” I used to worry more about my next career move, but I don’t think like that now.’
Despite being seven years older than her husband, she says it is she who is the immature one.
‘When we first started dating my friends said: “Oh God, he’s young!” But I didn’t even notice it. I am much more immature sometimes than he is. I am much more mischievous and naughty, he rolls his eyes at me.
‘I am stupid with my little girl. I’ll be jumping up and down on the bed making songs up and we will make up little silly dances, which is nice. I think I have a young spirit.
‘We would like to have more children, but you don’t know when you are going to get pregnant, so you can’t plan these things. It’s not like I can say I would like to be pregnant by x-date. You just see when it happens.’
There was never any chance of them doing Strictly together as has been suggested. ‘We try to keep our careers separate and do our own thing.’
Since Joseph, Lee has been busy combining his careers as a singer, acting on television and in musicals and panto.
Denise attributes part of her success in Strictly to being in a relaxed frame of mind, unlike fellow contestant Victoria Pendleton, who was visibly stressed.
Happy family: Denise has daughter Betsy with her husband Lee Mead who is seven years her junior
‘To really enjoy it you have to be in a good place. I was chatting to Victoria before she left and said to her: “You’ve got to remember what a year you have had.”
‘She went straight from the Olympics and all that huge pressure to this when I think she needed a good holiday. She’s the loveliest girl, but she was so tired.’
Denise has loved bonding with her pal Kimberley Walsh. They became mates when they climbed Mount Kilimanjaro for Comic Relief in 2009.
‘We spend a lot of time together in each other’s dressing rooms just chatting and being girlie. None of us needs to bitch, it’s not like that. We just sit doing online shopping and painting our nails.
‘People behind the show have said normally there’s at least one diva every year, but apparently this is the first where there hasn’t been someone who is a bit stroppy.
‘If I make it to the final, the last show is on December 22, which doesn’t leave much time to sort out Christmas. I’ll have to rely on my mum to do the food shopping. We’ll have a traditional Christmas at our home.’
Denise and Lee have a flat in North London, but the main family home is a 17th-century farmhouse in the Kent countryside.
‘Lee will be busy, but Betsy and I will be catching up with all my favourite TV programmes because I haven’t seen anything.’
But any post-Christmas respite won’t be for long. She is in negotiations to appear on the Strictly Come Dancing tour, which starts on January 18. Her most important project for the year will be an as yet unnamed one-woman musical show written especially for her to be staged in the West End before touring.
‘It has a Shirley Valentine feel but much more contemporary, representing women of my age group battling with careers and when to have babies and settle down. It won’t be autobiographical. It’s character based.’
For the moment, though, she’s still part of the Strictly family.
‘I will miss it,’ she says. ‘I won’t be able to watch it next year because I will be too jealous — or, as we say in Essex, “well jel”.’
Denise Van Outen is supporting Freeview+. For more information go to freeview.co.uk/moment
VIDEO: Denise's performing talents are showcased in Strictly Come Dancing
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2247880/Denise-Van-Outen-blasts-Lloyd-Webber-Johnny-Vaughan-says-Strictly-Come-Dancing-fix.html#ixzz2F2RiAJLF
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