The Queen said we’re cool but I don’t know if she voted, says Strictly’s Angela Rippon ahead of mission with partner Kai

WHEN veteran newsreader Angela Rippon and dancer Kai Widdrington performed a gravity-defying splits manoeuvre during their stint on Strictly, it quickly became one of the show’s most famous moments.

Jaws dropped at the idea that the show’s oldest-ever contestant still possessed the flexibility to raise her leg as high as her ear.

Just over a year on from competing, Angela, 80, and 29-year-old Kai have become unlikely best pals and are still able to recreate their show-stopping splits on demand.

Indeed, they do so before my very eyes, without so much as breaking a sweat, when I interview them in a dance studio in North London.

Torvill and Dean may have the Bolero but Angela and Kai have their standing splits . . . 

Angela has popped in to see her mate Kai during his lunch break from rehearsals for the Strictly Come Dancing tour.

Despite an age gap of more than half a century, Angela said: “We live five minutes from one another and we speak most days.”

On her recent milestone birthday, Kai surprised her with a bunch of flowers and took her for a drink.

He also travelled to Blackpool where she was collecting an award

‘Everyone can dance’

Their intergenerational friendship is touching to watch.

They finish each other’s sentences and at lunchtime Kai even split his sandwich with “Ange”, as he calls her.

Of course Kai wasn’t even born when Angela performed her iconic surprise turn on the Morecambe And Wise Christmas special in 1976, where she astonished the nation by stepping out from behind a newsreader’s desk and high-kicked her way through Let’s Face The Music And Dance with those ­perfect pins.

Kai said: “In actual fact my dad Tommy was only five years old when the Morecambe And Wise special aired. But he knew about it and it was Dad who told me to watch it when I was partnered with Angela on Strictly. I had never even heard of it.

“I am probably the only person to have watched it for the first time with Angela Rippon.

“I saw these pins go up by her ears and I turned to her and said, ‘Can you still do that?’ She said, ‘Let’s find out.’

“Our first routine was to Get This Party Started by Shirley Bassey and for the long note I started lifting her leg and said, ‘Does it go any higher?’ And she said, ‘Let’s find out’.”

Angela said: “That is how we would work every week. He would say, ‘Can you do this?’ And I would say, ‘Let’s find out’. That’s how I ended up doing the double splits in the rhumba.”

Their ambitious routines won the pair a legion of fans when they were on the show, including none other than Her Majesty the Queen.
Camilla is known to be a big Strictly fan and already knew Angela through her charity work.

Angela said: “The Queen said we were cool.”

Did she vote for them though?

“I don’t know,” replies Angela with a coy twinkle that suggests she in fact knows very well otherwise.

Audiences were astonished by Angela’s flexibility, something she has maintained, she says, by performing a ten-minute stretching routine every day. The splits are often a feature and she also takes ballet classes when she can.

This is precisely the reason why Angela has launched a one-woman crusade to get the nation on its feet, whatever their age, in the hope that like her, people will experience the health and social benefits of dance.

Angela said: “Everyone can dance, even people who say they can’t.

Everyone can dance, even people who say they can’t

Angela Rippon

“Just watch babies from the time they can walk — play music and they automatically move to it.

“Even if you are in your sixties, seventies or eighties, you can still dance — you can dance from a chair.

“This all started because I had so much feedback from people after I did Strictly and they were inspired by what I did on the show.

“I started ballet when I was five and danced until I was 17. Revisiting my roots in dance years later when I took part in Strictly, I felt the enormous benefits myself. And it sparked my mission.”

Her wingman in that mission is Strictly pro Kai, who had long been passionate about encouraging those at the younger end of the age spectrum into dance.

Together the pair have persuaded studios all over the country to throw open their doors for Let’s Dance! — the biggest nationwide dance event ever held.

On March 2, it will see dance teachers and studios offer taster classes in everything from ballroom and ballet to street dance.

Seasoned journalist Angela still has an incredible memory for facts.

She said: “I have all these statistics bursting in my head: 1.6million people over 60 have a fall every year, and it is costing the NHS in excess of £4billion, plus a further billion in social services for those people who lose their confidence when they come out of hospital.

“Well, if you can get to the point where you’ve got people of 60 who have got core strength — that’s over-60s with core strength and balance — they’re less likely to have a fall. And, of course, there is a wonderful social aspect to dance that helps combat loneliness. It is impossible to dance and feel isolated.”

The dance sessions will also be hosted in care homes and offices, and Angela even has plans to get MPs in Westminster dancing.

Such is the star’s zeal she has even managed to sign up Health Secretary Wes Streeting to take part in a Let’s Dance! session on March 3.

‘Like a little Billy Elliot’

More importantly, impressed with her persuasive arguments about the health benefits of dance, Streeting has also agreed to include it in his ­ambitious ten-year plan for the NHS.

She said: “In many ways this started for me when I was listening to Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty on the radio. He said we’ve all got to take more responsibility for our own health and do things ourselves that will help us. Eat well, exercise well

“He said, play football, go to a gym, dance. And I then spoke to him afterwards and said, well, I think as pensioners we can all do our bit.

“It’s grown into this tsunami now where the World Health Organization is ­following what we’re doing and wants to know what we’re doing.

“There are groups involved in this initiative who use dance to help ­people with Parkinson’s, stroke victims, dementia and even people recovering from cancer.”

Meanwhile Kai is passionate about getting more dance into schools and using it to engage kids more in PE lessons.

He and Angela are currently working on a pilot to take dance into 34 schools in Suffolk.

Kai is perfectly placed to inspire kids, especially boys, to dance.

His dad, Tommy Widdrington, 53, is a former Premier League footballer for Southampton, with Kai also ­showing great promise in the game as a youngster.

But his parents also sent him to their next-door-neighbour’s dance school in Stoke-on-Trent.

I ended up telling my Geordie dad I wanted to dance — like a little Billy Elliot. Within four years I was world champion in ballroom

Kai

He said: “I didn’t like it initially. But I loved listening to the music my dad would play in the car, like Michael Jackson and Luther Vandross, and in my mind I would be working out what dances I could do to what songs.

“At 12 I was offered a chance to sign for Southampton but the British dance champion also wanted to dance with me. So I had a decision to make.

“I ended up telling my Geordie dad I wanted to dance — like a little Billy Elliot. Within four years I was world champion in ballroom.

“Boys can worry about having the mickey taken out of them. But I did ballroom dancing and I was the captain of the football team and the fastest runner.

“So they didn’t know what to make of me.

“I would encourage boys to give it a go. It’s great that so many people enjoyed watching Angela and me on Strictly but we want people to know dance isn’t just something you watch on the telly on a Saturday night.”