Better Late Than Never

Nov 17, 2024 5:29 PM

Author:Len Goodman

Better Late Than Never is the extraordinary true story of how a man born into poverty in London's East End went on to find stardom late in life when he was chosen to be head judge on BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing. Len Goodman tells all about his new-found fame, his experiences on Strictly Come Dancing, and also on the no.1 US show Dancing with the Stars and his encounters with the likes of Heather Mills-McCartney and John Sergeant.

But the real story is in his East End roots. And Len's early life couldn't be more East End. The son of a Bethnal Green costermonger he spent his formative years running the fruit and veg barrow and being bathed at night in the same water Nan used to cook the beetroot. There are echoes of Billy Elliot too. Though Len was a welder in the London Docks, he dreamt of being a professional footballer, and came close to making the grade had he not broken his foot on Hackney Marshes. The doctor recommended ballroom dancing as a light aid to his recovery. And Len, it turned out, was a natural. At first his family and work mates mocked, but soon he had made the final of a national competition and the welders descended en masse to the Albert Hall to cheer him on. With his dance partner, and then wife Cheryl, Len won the British Championships in his late twenties and ballroom dancing became his life.

Funny and heart-warming, Len Goodman's autobiography has all the honest East End charm of Tommy Steele, Mike Read or Roberta Taylor.

Reviews

Find how he transformed himself from dejected sportsman to ballroom champion in this charming
memoir

—— Daily Express

The Doctor Who Annual for adults

—— The Guardian

You can douse all the other books about Who in lighter fuel and spark up your Zippo - this is all you need

—— SFX

...witty, self-aware and poignant

—— The Observer

...it radiates a glow of whimsy and invention

—— Independent on Sunday

My Name is Daphne Fairfax is a witty inside track on life's bigger themes: the mirage of fame, boredome, depression and death

—— The Times

Smith stands out among his generation for a willingness to keep pushing himself and experimenting with new forms of comedic expression ... Today's hottest young comics still see him as an inspiration

—— The Guardian

Witty, engaging and unconventional . . . As funny and emotionally satisfying as a great stand-up performance.

—— Independent on Sunday

Holroyd's sweeping biography...proceeds at a furious pace, and, in less expert hands, the detail packed onto the page might bewilder; instead, the effect is of an epic, perfectly balanced by intimacies of setting and character.

—— The New Yorker

As unconventional as it is fascinating

—— The Times

A fabulous cavalcade of a book, written with infectious verve

—— John Carey , The Sunday Times

To attempt the biography of even one of these giants of the 19th Century English stage would be a challenge to most, but the energetic Michael Holroyd tackles both...Amazingly he carried it off in a ripping yarn spiced with melodrama and tinged with pathos

—— Judith Rice , The Guardian

Holroyd's charmingly modest intention is to "carry readers back in time and convey a sense of adventure and intimacy with the past". In this he triumphantly succeeds

—— Katie Owen , Sunday Telegraph

A funny, gossipy epic

—— Christopher Hirst , Independent

Self-depracating yet never self-pitying, irreverent yet never truly cynical, she comes across as a woman genuinely at ease with herself ... French is engaging company, and at her best she writes about heartbreak and elation with such grace that her book is impossible to dislike

—— Boston Standard

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