Arlene Phillips speaks ahead of Shrewsbury show

The friend-of-the-stars, who lives in Herefordshire countryside, not far from Leominster, takes time out of her busy schedule to visit the pretty south Shropshire town.

“I love it. We have a little cottage in Herefordshire and it’s delightful. Nothing brings me more joy than walking round Ludlow Market. That’s one of the greatest pleasures I have in life, truly.”

Arlene will be passing through Ludlow en route to Shrewsbury's Theatre Severn on October 22. She’ll be appearing in Arlene! The Glitz. The Glamour. The Gossip. The show gives her the opportunity to reflect on a remarkable life that has included 40 years in showbusiness.

There are tales of Freddie Mercury. Whitney Houston. Elton John. Starlight Express. We Will Rock You. Annie. Strictly Come Dancing. Hot Gossip... The list goes on... and on... and on...

Because Phillips has been an inimitable choreographer and director for over four decades. Since creating the provocative dance group Hot Gossip in the 1970s, she has been a household name. Phillips was the toughest judge on Strictly Come Dancing and her Shrewsbury audience will feature the stories behind the multi-award winning musicals, music videos, TV shows, films and many more dance extravaganzas.

She will gossip with Jacquie Storey about a lifetime in dance and reveal the truth from behind the curtains.

It won’t be her first visit to the area. She was a guest at the theatre when she published Alana Dancing Star, a series of six books for children in which the title character explored different genres of dance. And yet it’s her life in showbusiness that will captivate fans. Phillips has numerous film credits, from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and Ridley Scott’s Legend to John Huston’s Annie, Can’t Stop the Music, The Wind in the Willows and The Fan, starring Lauren Bacall.

“The show is about my life and history in dance. I grew up wanting to dance and it was impossible. So I talk about how I made it happen by teaching and then doing a commercial for Ridley Scott. Then I became the commercials queen and formed a dance group called Hot Gossip.

They were totally disastrously unsuccessful, they didn’t become an overnight sensation as many people think. But what happened is that they appeared on the Kenny Everett Video Show and Mary Whitehouse, the self-appointed guardian of morals, complained. That made front page news and I never looked back, career-wise. It went from strength to strength. I made films like Annie and music videos for all of the big rock stars during the MTV era.”

Arlene’s struggle is remarkable. She grew up in straightened circumstances with no money available for dance lessons. So she would dance around at home and read library books and constantly about dance and ballet schools.

“I lived in the library. By the age of eight an uncle agreed to pay for my dance lessons and my journey to dancing began. It was tough and hard and I did paper rounds and worked in a bake shop on a Sunday morning from the age of 11 to pay for those classes. I was hoping to go to a dance school in London. That would have been my dream. But my mother passed away and it was too difficult, so I started teaching in Manchester instead.”

Eventually, she made it London and decided to take any job she could in order to start her career. She wanted to be a dancer but was instead asked by Ridley Scott to choreograph a commercial. She knew how to do that because she’d been teaching. From then on, she started choreographing.

“It’s very hard when you want something as badly as I wanted to dance. I think it started when I saw a Russian dance company when I was small. That, I think, inspired me to dance. It was the beauty that I saw in it. I wanted to be part of that beauty. When you have an ambition for something and something drives you, you have no way of knowing where that moment came. But I imagine it was from seeing that dance company as a little girl.” Though Phillips imagined she’d be a dancer, her talent for choreography kept her busy. And to this day she has maintained her excitement and enthusiasm for her work. She’s worked in different types of production and become an expert in different forms of dance.

“My first big musical was Starlight Express, with Andrew Lloyd Webber. And the first big film was Can’t Stop the Music, with Village People, and Bruce Jenner, who became Caitlyn Jenner. One thing becomes a success and leads to the next the next. You just have to keep going on and hoping that success continues.”

Hot Gossip were the act that changed her life. Unlike TV dance troupes before, they were honestly and outwardly sexy. When they first appeared on TV they were considered outrageous – and the banner headlines propelled Phillips into the big time. “Those overtly sexy moves didn’t come from any place that dance had been to before. So it really was talked about. And the success was not just because of Mary Whitehouse complaining in the Houses of Parliament and wanting to protect children from us. The success was because it was so different and it made a change to dance on TV.

“I didn’t have an idea things would change because we’d been doing it for three years and had worked in nightclubs. We were told by TV producers for the three years before that we were too sexy for TV and it wasn’t possible for us to be on their shows. I didn’t think it was particularly outrageous from my perspective. What we were doing was what was going on at the heartbeat of London. Clubs were changing. That’s what was going on. TV entertainment stuck rigidly to step kick style of dance. But we changed all that.”

She worked with rock’s mega stars, making videos for Elton John’s I’m Still Standing, Whitney Houston’s How Will I Know and I’m Gonna Dance with Somebody, Freddie Mercury’s I Was Born To Love You and Duran Duran’s Wild Boys. “The impact was enormous, enormous.”

And then came Strictly, the show she was sensationally sacked from in a row about supposed ageism on the part of the BBC. Arlene has no grudges – she had too much fun to look back in anger. “I loved Strictly and So You Think You Can Dance. Those TV dance programmes were so exciting and I loved being part of them. They popularised dance for the masses. Dance classes are absolutely chok-a-blok because of programmes like Strictly. And that’s great because it doesn’t matter how you dance, the very act of it is good for your health, well-being and mindset.”