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The world according to Len

2016-12-16T10:00:00+00:00

Len Goodman is a Strictly legend for many reasons: his encyclopaedic knowledge of dance first and foremost but also his one-liners. After this, Len’s final Strictly season we wanted to revisit some of our favourite Len pearls of wisdom this series.

On Judge Rinder:

Judge Rinder and Oksana Platero Jive to 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy'

“You put the boy in flamboyant… if entertainment’s a crime you’re guilty”

“You put the camp into boot camp… that was as tight as a bugle boy”

“It was like a Mary Berry soufflé, light and fluffy and no soggy bottom”

On Anastacia:

Anastacia and Brendan Cole Cha Cha to 'Lady Marmalade'

“You’re a bit like marmalade: tangy and slightly fruity”

“It was a bit like a meatloaf: there were some tasty bits in there, there there’s always things you’re not really sure about”

On Claudia:

Claudia Fragapane and AJ Pritchard Salsa to ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’ from The Lion King

“Don’t worry about Claudia, the outlook is sunny”

“It was a mix of frisky and risky: frisky movement and risky lifts but you pulled them all off”

"You've gone from gymnastic to fantastic"

On Greg:

Greg Rutherford and Natalie Lowe Tango to 'Jump'

“It was like the candyfloss: tasty mostly but a little bit sticky in the footwork.”

“It’s Fireworks Night and you’ve come back with a bang”

On Will:

Will Young and Karen Clifton Salsa to 'Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny)'

“You’ve come to Borehamwood to do Hollywood and we got Bollywood”

On Ed:

Ed Balls and Katya Jones Paso Doble to 'Holding Out For a Hero'

“What’s great is the anticipation when you are coming out…”

“I don’t know about holding out for a hero, I was holding out for a paso”

“This is the trouble with hitchhiking, you always get a dodgy lift”

“Talk about super natural – it wasn’t super and it wasn’t all that natural – but it was so much fun”

“There aren’t words in the dictionary”

“Ed Balls, you’re like lottery balls – ou never know what’s going to come out next”

On Ore:

Ore Oduba and Joanne Clifton Foxtrot to ‘Pure Imagination’ from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

“Wolly Wonka it’s a stonker”

“A show-stopping, jaw-dropping, eve-popping jive”

“It had flare, it had fun, it had flamboyance… I had a blimming good look at your bum and I tell you your hips were hypnotic”

On Daisy:

Daisy Lowe and Aljaz Skorjanec Salsa to 'Groove Is In The Heart' by Deee-Lite

“You are not lazy Daisy, you have worked hard.”

“Who better to give us a bit of flower power than Daisy?”

On Louise:

Louise Redknapp and Kevin Clifton Quickstep to ‘The Deadwood Stage’ from Calamity Jane

“I don’t know about the Deadwood Stage but I think you could go on the West End Stage”

“It was a dance in France and getting an Eiffel was delightful”

“This morning I walked here and I was blown away on the sea front, and I was blown away by that tonight”

"As Brucey would say: didn't she do well"

On Laura:

Laura Whitmore and Giovanni Pernice Quickstep to 'Ballroom Blitz'

“Zipedidoda – there was plenty of zip and hardly any doo da”

On Danny:

Danny Mac and Oti Mabuse Samba to ‘Magalenha’ by Sergio Mendes

"It was a bit like my breakfast porridge: hot and steamy with an Oti flavour"

“I don’t know about long tall Sally, that was fast foot Danny… Danny Mac you’re back”

Find out more about Strictly and watch more clips on the Strictly Come Dancing website

Advice when they ask you to be on Strictly

2015-11-13T06:37:58+00:00

Don’t ask me why, but I had the sudden thought: Strictly will happen again next year. And the year after. And the year after that, even unto the next Labour government, even beyond the year they celebrate the 50th anniversary of HS2 and people ask, “What exactly was Bake-Off?”

Strictly Come Dancing will outlive me, and you. It might actually outlive the BBC itself.

It is that powerful a product.

Yes, I thought, compared to the might of Strictly, we are all just flashes in the eye of time. And I imagined myself, as a current contestant, giving advice to those who follow me onto the show, perhaps people not yet born.

So eight thoughts follow, aimed at some future person wondering whether to take up the offer of a place.

1. Strictly is the biggest show the BBC has ever created.

After my first foray onto that famous floor, where my meticulously-rehearsed cha-cha-cha turned into a passable impression of a man rushing down the stairs in a blazing house, I emerged shell-shocked and saw the Olympian Iwan Thomas. “That,” I said, “was bigger than doing the first ten minutes of the general election programme.”

The decorated sprinter replied, “No, it was even bigger. It was bigger than an Olympic final.”

A week later he was run out of town, and we watched him disappear in our fake tans and false eyelashes with the blood cooling in our veins.

So do not say yes to Strictly if you have a nervous condition or are scared by an audience thirty times louder than any starter pistol.

2. Wait. Strictly is bigger than Morecambe and Wise?

Ernie Wise and Eric Morecambe

Indeed so. Eric and Ernie had 22 million viewers but the environment was less competitive. There was no YouTube, no Netflix. Two other channels instead of two hundred. Morecambe and Wise were also not sold to 53 other countries from Finland to Kazakhstan. Four years ago President Obama rescheduled a speech on Libya to avoid clashing with the American Strictly. I don’t recall Nixon doing that for Eric and Ernie.

3. When you join Strictly, you become a celebrity.

Get used to this and do not resist it. I’m afraid I wasted a few weeks determined to remain a journalist and not a star. On my first visit to the Elstree studios, I asked a stout woman in a security uniform where I could get something to eat.

She pointed to the white marquee attached to the back of the Strictly set. “Sir, that is the star bar for the celebrities.”
“Right,” I said, assuming she was in the habit of imparting irrelevant information to strangers. “And what about me? Where do I go?”

I simply had not understood that, after 27 years of news broadcasting, a person could be elevated to a household name simply by being publicly abused by Craig Revel-Horwood for dad-dancing.

Enjoy it when it happens.

4. This will be the closest you get to understanding politics.

Anyone who watches the show can see that it is not a purely technical contest. The judges score on ability, but the audience vote with their hearts.

However, it is very hard to work out where the two intersect. For example, in 2014 Dave “Hairy Biker” Myers stormed along as the loveable amateur for weeks until the viewers decided he was unfairly taking the place of more competent dancers and pulled the plug on him. Similarly, the über-cool Pixie Lott was the finest dancer of her year but somehow failed to connect with the audience and was brutally defenestrated. Gabby Logan was voted out early when she drifted into view at the back of a camera shot doing stretching exercises, which gave the off-putting subliminal message: “I am taking this very seriously.”

So the programme combines the votes of the judges and the audience to see who wins. And that complicated space between being technically effective, and being liked is where politicians operate every single hour of the day. I wish I could define it better, but the joy of it is that I can’t.

Probably the best way to sum the issue up is this: the programme is not judging you on what you do. It is judging you on who you are.

5. You will make friends for life.

Friends for life - Strictly's class of 2015

The camaraderie between the celebs is akin to a hostage situation. After a few weeks on the show I realised that I have exchanged hugs with (for example) Katie Derham and Peter Andre that express more than any perfumed letter or lovers’ argument. In a condition that seems to mirror Stockholm Syndrome, I have grown an unrequited adoration for Craig Revel-Horwood as I watch the sheer speed of his executions. “As for your hands,” he told one hapless celeb, “they were spatulistic.”

The night Jay McGuiness danced that incredible jive from Pulp Fiction he wandered into the costume room and was surrounded by me, Daniel O’Donnell and Ainsley Harriott. We understood what he had done because we knew, from our own experience, that the impact of the live dancefloor will flush 30% of your technique on the spot. So we congratulated the star of The Wanted with pats on the back and heartfelt sincerity.

Something powerful passed between us. Jay said in nothing in reply. He simply turned and walked out of the room. As he left I realised he was crying.

There is an allowable amount of luvvie behaviour: even the most tragic effort will be described as brilliant by your fellow contestants when you get back to the balcony, because we all have the reflex to spread encouragement. But before you say, “It’s not life or death, why would you feel any of this so strongly?” be aware of what the question says about you. Dancing is more than dancing. It is about baring the soul through the body. A person who does that and is rejected suffers a mortal wound.

6. You will hurt.

In the third week, I discovered the muscle that runs from my calf, under my left ankle, into the base of my foot. I have never previously heard of the peroneus brevis, but after fifty years of unstinting service it made its presence felt in the most excruciating way by going on strike against the Charleston, the madcap 1930s dance which involves a slicing in-and-out heel motion. My ankle swelled up. I took anti-inflammatories and had it taped; it swelled down. Next I launched into the jive (left foot on tiptoe; kick twice with your right toe pointed; try to hit right heel on buttock; replace right foot behind the left, all in half a second) and within fifteen kicks had torn something at the back of my right thigh. Like I say, you will hurt.

Get used to it.

7. Your children will despair.

So you want to dance because you have two young daughters? Think again. The initial excitement of “my dad’s on Strictly”, is quickly replaced by the realisation: he’s a bit of a muppet, really, isn’t he?

After my first dance a woman who had sat next to my brother in the studio confided, “I think Tim really enjoyed it. He was laughing all the way through.”

My young daughters are certainly enjoying watching their father, but only in the way you enjoy watching a distant tornado tear the roofs off houses. Part of what keeps them captivated is the sense that I might spin off the stage while carrying my dance partner above my head. Strictly drives them behind the sofa in a way that no episode of Doctor Who can. And because, like political careers, the contest nearly always ends in tears, I can’t see how we end up in credit after all this.

8. You will lose yourself, and find yourself, simultaneously.

Jeremy with dance partner Karen Clifton

This is the biggest one. You have not entered the contest because your attitude is "Whatev," you have entered to better yourself and maybe even to win. Straightaway you discover that there are dancers you will never beat, so you are left with the simple aim of self-improvement. But the process begins with destruction.

No one learns to play the piano without first acknowledging that they cannot play. I had to put myself in the hands of Karen Clifton, my pro dance partner, and tell her to save me. She replied that she could keep me in the contest if I did exactly what she said. It led to a bizarre argument after a studio rehearsal for dance two, where she said I had thrown my footwork by winking at a camera. "You don't wink unless I tell you to," she told me.

Which is when I understood why they call it Strictly.

Jeremy Vine is a presenter on BBC Radio 2 and Strictly Come Dancing contestant.

Week 8's Strictly Come Dancing contest will be broadcast on BBC One, on Sat 14 Nov at 6.50pm, with the results show on Sun 15 Nov at 7.20pm, and will also be available on iPlayer
Keep up to date with the dancers progress in It Takes Two on BBC Two, Mon-Thu 6pm, Fri 6.30pm
Take a look behind the scenes at Elstree on the Strictly Come Dancing website
Read Christopher Nundy's blog about filming Strictly Come Dancing in 360 degrees

How we learnt to dance

2014-11-07T12:24:48+00:00

The movie Strictly Ballroom is about an ugly duckling who becomes a swan through dance. The dancing isn’t Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, it’s regional Australian ballroom dancing. Its big song wasn’t even a Number One. The lead actor was a roofer. It shouldn’t have worked. No one should have seen it. And yet...

May 2004: “Glitter balls, sequins, scantily clad dancers – it doesn’t get more public service than this!” was how I introduced the BBC’s new entertainment show at its press launch. A launch that was met by total derision in newspapers, radio and even on Have I Got News For You. Another example of a terrible idea from BBC Entertainment. A programme that would not work. And yet, like the film from which we nabbed the title, it was an ugly duckling that became a swan.

Ten years ago, BBC Entertainment was in pretty bad shape. The launch of reality television caught the BBC out: whilst we were making Big Break, others were making Big Brother. When I inherited BBC Entertainment, I knew that we had to respond; we needed ideas that could compete in a changing landscape, ideas that were bold, loud and entertaining.

The spark for Strictly came from Jane Lush’s commissioning team. Jane deserves enormous credit for starting a golden age of entertainment on the BBC: Strictly, The Apprentice, Dragons’ Den, still hits almost a decade on, all commissioned by her. She was having a brainstorm with her team, discussing old formats, when Fenia Vardanis suggested a celebrity version of Come Dancing. But could the BBC make an entertainment show that had celebrities in it? Could we deliver it?

Jane passed the idea on to Richard Hopkins. Richard was the first person I brought in to kick-start the Entertainment department. I got lucky with Richard, he had been behind some of Endemol’s most recent successes and brought a different energy and perspective. A development team under Amanda Wilson, no more than a bunch of kids, people like Karl Warner, Nick Mather, Chris Sussman, all highly regarded now. And a new Executive Producer, Karen Smith.

Karen joined us in October 2003. Driven, tenacious, with a great eye for detail, she remains the best live entertainment producer I have ever worked with. Karen got the idea immediately. She had just overseen The Games for Channel 4 and she understood that this new show had to be a sporting competition; rigorous, true and authentic. The starting point was never Come Dancing – I don’t think anyone even watched the old show – the starting point was ballroom dancing as a competitive event infused with glamour and celebrities.

Karen and her series producer Izzie Pick started to learn everything they could about the ballroom dancing scene. There was scepticism and even hostility from many in the ballroom world. Surely we were just going to take the piss? There are probably a few dancers and judges out there who now regret refusing to return calls. Some of the characters the nation now loves were in from the start, especially Anton du Beke and Brendan Cole, who bawled out Karen at their first meeting: “They’re not sequins, they’re rhinestones!” But it was the dancers’ insistence that there had to be proper judging, that it couldn’t just be a popularity contest, which got Karen to design the 50:50 voting system.

Karen and Izzy wanted a staircase at the back of the set, because of a shared fantasy they had about standing at the top with their prince waiting below. They claimed lots of women did.

Originally there were going to be three judges. There was some push back against our fourth, mostly because of his age, but we needed proper ballroom expertise and that is how Len Goodman got on to the panel. Mind you, I don’t think any of us thought he would become an international household name.

To pitch the show to the then BBC One Controller Lorraine Heggessey we had to come up with something different. So we hired a small outside studio. Lorraine was ushered into a totally dark room. Lights came on, music blasted and two near naked dancers, glistening in baby oil, writhed inches away from her. I wouldn’t suggest this in any way affected Lorraine’s professional judgement – but put it this way, it didn’t do any harm. There was a slot in the summer available, let’s give it a go.

Casting the first series strained everyone. People weren’t exactly throwing themselves at us. We struggled to get eight celebrities. The hardest of all was Natasha Kaplinsky. We were desperate for Natasha. Natasha wasn’t sure it was the thing a BBC newsreader should do. There were meetings, lots of them. Somehow we got her over the line.

We learnt things along the way. Sports stars were good bookings: utterly competitive, used to training, they raise the commitment of everyone else. We underestimated the level of training the celebrities would have to do, we thought two to three sessions of two hours a week would do.

The first show went on air on 15 May 2004. Even then the critics weren’t kind. Karen had to go on Points of View and defend it from people who said, “This isn’t Come Dancing”. Typically combative, when she finished, Terry Wogan said, “So that’s told you lot”.

But as the series rolled out, so it began to grow. The highlight for me of that first season was the absolutely appalling, train wreck that was Chris Parker’s paso doble. But the moment when Strictly started its journey to cherished national icon was in the final. Karen had created a “there are no lifts in ballroom” controversy throughout the series, but now, in the final dance, she had bad boy Brendan and Natasha do “The Time of My Life” with a big nobody-puts-baby-in-the-corner lift. The roof came off. We had our first winners and we felt we had a show that would probably get a second series.

Karen and Izzie packed their bags for a girls’ holiday to Ibiza. On the Monday I called them. Lorraine wanted a second series. But she wanted it for the autumn, we had less than four months, we thought we’d better start making some calls...

Wayne Garvie is Chief Creative Officer, International Production at Sony Pictures TV, formerly Head of BBC Entertainment.

'That's Entertainment': bringing Strictly 2013 to our screens

2013-09-27T10:07:14+00:00

My name is Katie Taylor, and I’m the Controller of Entertainment and Events at the BBC. With the Live Strictly Come Dancing shows starting this weekend, now seemed a good time to introduce myself on the About the BBC Blog, explain some of the work the Entertainment and Events department does, and tell you what we’ve been doing to bring the new season of Strictly to our screens this Autumn.

Entertainment and Events (the BBC’s in-house entertainment production teams) makes over 300 hours of television for BBC One, Two, Three and Four, ranging from the likes of Children in Need and Top Gear to quiz shows like Mastermind and factual entertainment programmes like Dragons Den. We’re also responsible for the in-house production of live events like Trooping of the Colour, the Festival of Remembrance and last year’s Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace.

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert.

The aim of many of our programmes is to bring the Nation together around their TV sets and get them talking, whether it’s to witness the first balcony kiss of Prince William and Kate or to watch astrologer Russell Grant being shot from a canon at Wembley.

Put simply, our work is everything from all things Royal and ceremonial, to a cha cha cha in a ballroom, to entrepreneurs going in front of fearsome businessmen to discover whether they're in or out of investing in a wiggly hot water bottle. No day is ever the same and life is far from dull.

My role as Controller is something akin to being the conductor of an orchestra staffed by very talented musicians. I've always believed in employing, and giving credit to, people who are brilliant at their own jobs. That leaves me time to do a lot more of the day to day strategy and forward planning, leaving the creative teams to get on with pursuing the talent we want to work with or making that running order or edit better.

It helps me that I've worked in various production roles for most of my career. I've worked at Channel 4 for many years and many ‘indies’ doing everything from Noel's House Party as a researcher, to Challenge Anneka, to Don't Forget Your Toothbrush and Comic Relief, so I understand the production issues.

I've also worked as a Commissioner on Graham Norton's chat show both at Channel 4 and at BBC. So I also understand the importance of talent. I am quite 'front of house' and I will do a lot of business with agents and talent talking about ideas, what they might want to do, and persuade them to come and work with BBC in-house. I see that my job is a bit of flag waving: “come and work with us, we're fun, you're going to have a nice time and do good work".

As I mentioned earlier, this weekend sees the return of one of the most popular of our in-house productions, Strictly Come Dancing. And it’s a milestone in the programme’s history too, with a new production team and a new studio location.

Logistically speaking, there have been months and months of planning leading up to this point, one of the biggest challenges being how to open each programme. Television Centre was such an iconic building, that the opening ‘topshot’ with the voiceover "Live from Television Centre" was an obvious introduction, but having moved out of TVC to studios in Borehamwood, we weren’t convinced that "Live from Elstree Studios" and a shot of a car park would have the same impact.

We had to think creatively of how we would address the challenge of launching the show at Elstree. Our new Executive Producer Louise Rainbow, came up with the idea of a 1940's Gatsby inspired, glitzy film premiere feel, with a red carpet and a vintage car for Bruce and Tess to arrive in. Influenced by the final from last year, the 2013 celebrities made their appearance in front of popping paparazzi, pyrotechnics, music and glitz. The end product felt a bit more of an occasion than our usual launches. It was a lot of logistics for around three minutes of telly, but it was all about spectacle for the opening of our new ballroom. Indeed it was the highest rating ‘launch’ show, since Strictly began.

Our new location at Elstree Studios presented some production challenges too. The studio is much bigger than TC1 (Strictly’s previous home at Television Centre) meaning we had the opportunity to design a bigger set (one which at Elstree we don’t need to dismantle at the end of every live show). Our challenge was to make the set look the same but include some enhancements. Our set designer Patrick Docherty was able to make some changes on a very tight budget, which in turn brought the live orchestra closer (we are one of the few live shows that has a live orchestra) led by the wonderful Dave Arch.

The 2013 Strictly Come Dancing group in their new surroundings at Elstree Studios.

The larger studio also allowed us to bring in an extra 200 members of the audience and offer them raked seating as opposed to the ‘flat’ audience seating at TC1. What that means is it's a big enough scale for the dancers, performers and presenters to get a wall of sound back from the crowd without losing the intimacy which we know audiences have really loved in previous series.

Last year the standard of dance in the final was so high and we were keen to maintain that, so this series we have introduced a ‘dance captain’ or ‘master choreographer’ in the shape of Jason Gilkinson, who worked with us at the Wembley show last year. Our professional dancers are brilliant, and we have five fantastic new ones joining the line-up, but the run can be physically and emotionally draining, so Jason will be there to give them extra support, he will go into the training rooms in the week, see what the teams are planning and assist them if he can.

This year we’ll also be back at the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool part-way through the series. The ballroom is a beautiful venue with classic chandeliers, and importantly opens up the opportunity for 1000 members of the public across the north of England to be a part of the experience. At a time of tightening budgets, this outside broadcast is something Strictly’s exec Louise Rainbow really passionately fought for. "We have to take dance to the people," I remember her saying in early planning meetings. I really agree. The dancers and our Judges have all performed and judged competitions there, so it’s a very emotional experience for them when they step out onto the floor in the natural home of ballroom dancing. And for the competitors, there’s the challenge that "Oh, I must get to Blackpool - if I get there, I might be in with a chance of winning."

Strictly is a really warm piece of feel-good, escapist entertainment. I get a tingle when the music begins as I sit in the back of the gallery and I know that audiences feel the same way about the programme – a programme they rightly own because of the amount of time they’ve invested in the series over the years. There’s nothing better than striking up a conversation with someone, who when they learn I am involved in the programme, start to tell me what they like and what they don’t like. That a programme has that effect is an amazing thing and another reason why I feel incredibly proud to be a part of it.

Katie Taylor is Controller of Entertainment and Events at the BBC.

The new series of Strictly Come Dancing begins on Friday Sep 27 at 9pm.
Read about the couple First Steps together on the Strictly Come Dancing blog.
Keep up with all the behind the scenes action in the series' sister show It Takes Two.

Keep Dancing

2010-09-28T11:01:39+00:00

Well, we know that autumn's really here when another band of courageous celebs don their glittering costumes and take on the challenge that is Strictly Come Dancing! It's now well and truly part of the seasonal calendar, and has successfully reinvented Saturday night on the BBC.

Strange, but perhaps not so strange, to reflect that 60 years ago on 29 September 1950, Strictly's predecessor, Come Dancing hit the air. It ran off and on from 1949 (regional launch) to 1998, making it one of TV's longest running shows, and its removal was greeted with howls of horror from British ballroom dance fans.

It boasted an array of really famous presenters too. From Peter Dimmock (the future mastermind of the televisation of the 1953 coronation) and Leslie Mitchell (the British Clarke Gable-lookalike presenter of early BBC TV) to Angela Rippon, Judith Chalmers and Terry Wogan (and you can't get much more famous than Sir Terry!). Its over-the-top glamour - even in black and white - fascinated a grey and gloomy Britain still in the grip of post war blues.

But strange, because in Britain the public perception is still one of surprise that anyone - but in particular a man - can dance. And yet, according to the Arts Council, dance is now the top UK leisure pursuit.

It has also been at the heart of our BBC TV schedules from the earliest times. In 1937, the BBC had Charles B Cochrane's 'Young Ladies' in full-on variety mode, glamorous ballroom dancers, plus a young Margot Fonteyn in her tutu. Later, dance was the staple of every entertainment show - even Morecombe & Wise put on the top hat and tails, and Angela Rippon slid (almost) effortlessly from serious newscaster to dance presenter via her high kicks with Eric and Ernie!

So, in spite of ourselves, we really have been, and are, a nation of dance lovers. We aspire to its elegance - remember Audrey Hepburn singing in My Fair Lady 'I could have danced all night'. Cue the whirling of countless sequinned dresses and straight-backed men in tails on Come Dancing.

But not too much… John Sergeant could never dance but we loved his indefatigable insistence on Strictly Come Dancing that he would try and try. We want sublime dance skill, but we also want a little deflating of its self-conscious pursuit of poise and perfection. What Strictly has cleverly pulled off is a bridge between these two TV dance extremes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/assets_c/2010/09/johnsergeant-56370.shtml

So to paraphrase Bruce and Tess: Keep dancing, BBC.

Robert Seatter is Head of BBC History

The Strictly Come Dancing Costumes are on display at BBC Television Centre until 11 October

Read a blog post from Dave Arch, the musical director and conductor of the live band for Strictly Come Dancing, on the TV blog.

Strictly come North!

2009-11-09T14:15:58+00:00

It was fantastic to see Strictly Come Dancing back in its spiritual home this weekend: the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool. You saw Coronation Street's Craig voted out in his hometown. But what you didn't see were our apparently fit and health-conscious pro-dancers sneaking into Harry Ramsden's fish and chip shop.

Still, there has always been something decidedly naughty about the British seaside...

More than 1,000 people crammed into the ballroom - three or four times the number that fit in Studio One in West London. Excitement was high with lots of "oohs" and "aahs" as people spied for the first time how we had recreated Strictly's regular studio feel. It was a rare chance to sample a peak-time Saturday favourite in their own backyard. That's what was so special - the BBC came to them.

I know everyone involved in the show and the lucky ones who managed to get a ticket had a great time and received the warmest of welcomes from their hosts. But Strictly in Blackpool was not just about the two hours of prime time TV.

Before the live show - courtesy of BBC Learning - dancers of all ages and abilities had the chance to show their moves at the Tower in front of some of the stars of the show. Here is a taster of what they got up to:

I just love that. It's the BBC at its best, isn't it? Giving our audiences the chance to be part of their favourite shows and offering them a unique experience. And being able to touch, see and be part of some of our great content is something we are doing more and more of in the North.

My view is that it means a whole lot more the further you get from West London, where film crews and big shows are two-a-penny.

A couple of weekends ago, Radio 5 Live spent three days broadcasting in Hull (from an inflatable igloo!) and were visited by 45,000 people.

Meanwhile, along the M62 in Liverpool, BBC Children's hosted a weekend based around the hugely successful Sarah Jane Adventures featuring exclusive screenings and the chance to meet stars and to film your own version of the opening sequence. Some of the 8,000 kids and parents who came along had travelled all the way from Southampton and Edinburgh. No news yet on whether any time travellers attended.

When you add into this the huge amount of 'routine' outreach work that the BBC undertakes in the North of England all year round, you realise we have quite a story to tell. Today, for instance, a community theatre project kicks off in Whitehaven, Cumbria, in aid of Children in Need, while our ongoing work from Breathing Places to BBC Blast continues to go from strength to strength. Add the bigger events, like Sports Personality of the Year in Sheffield in December - the sports world's equivalent of Strictly - and a pattern begins to emerge: a plan for how we start to build a BBC that is more effective at innovating with, inspiring and surprising our audiences every which way we can.

As the Director of BBC North, I see the big adventure we are undertaking to relocate major departments including Sport, Children's and 5 Live to Salford in 2011 as just the start of this. If we want to be effective from Liverpool to Newcastle, Crewe to Carlisle, then we have to do so much more. Working outside our comfort zones will become the norm.

Northern audiences may be pleased, but our ambition is greater than just moving great services to the North. We want to build on these foundations so that it can become a hotbed for more drama, comedy and, of course, Saturday night entertainment.

We have to get on our bikes and more often take our content to where licence fee payers least expect to see it. John Godber, writer and founding father of Hull Truck Theatre, told me: "It should be like throwing a rock in a pool. The ripples have to go out from Salford and touch all the communities of the North."

That's quite a challenge. But, then again, we have sown a few seeds in the last few weeks - from Blackpool to Merseyside. Now we have to capitalise on the genuine excitement the audience feels when we bring our content closer to their neighbourhoods.

Roadshows and marketing events are not the only answer. The willingness to live, work and entertain a bit closer to where audiences live is core to our mission. Certainly we have to try harder in northern England, where approval for the BBC has always been several points behind the UK average.

But by planting our feet in the North we are rewiring the BBC, from content collaboration to careers. After all, 50 per cent of all our content will be produced outside London by 2016.

An 81-year-old lady who queued from nine in the morning in the pouring rain to see Strictly Come Dancing in Blackpool and another with double false eyelashes and a feather boa dress are proof that, if we make the effort, the audiences will throw us a great big party.