CHAPTER 19

FAREWELL TO ALL THAT

One of the first things I learned about Tom was that he shared my passion for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And when he confided that he’d always dreamed of dancing like Fred, a light bulb went on in my head and I made it my mission to take this lovely man to the season final for a Fred-and-Ginger style routine.

I felt like I’d been given something precious to hold and told not to drop it. Tom had everything he needed to succeed, and I wanted to make this the best season I’d ever performed in. I was determined to treasure every moment, before I took my final bow and left the series.

Kevin’s a great believer in ‘living in the now’ – focusing on the present moment – and, now I had him in my life, I decided that living in the now would optimize my chances of success.

LIVING IN THE NOW

‘Living in the now’ is exactly what it says it is. We acknowledge the thoughts about the past and future that come to mind, but we do not dwell on them. When you live in the now, you hear the birds, smell the flowers, taste the wine, feel the breeze ruffling your hair or, put less practically, you immerse yourself in whatever task you have currently taken on. Not only is it hugely beneficial for wellbeing, it also makes you more productive at work.

Kindred spirits

I took each day of season six one at a time, focusing on surviving the elimination at the end of each week. When the camera was on us in close-up, when some couples are told they’re going through or that they have to dance off, the tense expressions on everyone’s faces, celebs and professionals alike, aren’t faked. We all want to go through. That’s why I used all the tools I’d learnt through my NLP healing – such as anchoring, hypnosis and visualization – and throughout my years of competing to make sure I was mentally prepared.

Tom was quick to learn and training with him was an absolute pleasure. It was funny, after so many seasons, with so many partners, to find one with whom everything felt 100 per cent right.

We’d spend our coffee breaks talking about our dreams for the future and how we believed in the law of attraction. We had so much in common and that was a tremendous help to our dancing.

I found myself really opening up to Tom. I told him how I’d started studying NLP and wanted to become a life coach, motivating people to follow their dreams and find happiness; I told him how I’d always secretly wanted to act. In turn, Tom told me how he’d always wanted a role in which he’d have to dance as well as act. Just having those conversations made me feel like we were planting seeds. I knew Tom had what it took to dance. He was sure I had it in me to act. Who knew that a few years later I’d land a part in Calendar Girls, and Tom would be given the lead in a West End production of Top Hat, actually dancing like Fred Astaire. I was overwhelmed with joy when I went to watch him, and the fact that I knew that I had played a part in the huge success he had confirmed my belief in synchronicity – we’d met because we each had something to offer the other.

Kevin and Clare, Tom’s wife, became our back-up team, supporting us all the way; and as the weeks ticked by, we realized we were hurtling toward the final.

If they could see me now

It was 12 weeks after the first time we danced on screen and we’d made it to the final three couples – with Brendan and his partner Lisa Snowdon, and Vincent Simone who was with Rachel Stevens.

All the finalists had to rehearse all day every Saturday to ensure that ‘lighting and camera’ would be perfect when we went out live in the evening, which meant someone had to rehearse winning, too. Now dancers are a superstitious lot and when the cameraman said he needed a couple to pretend to win and potentially hold the trophy none of us wanted to tempt fate. But someone had to do it, so we put our names in a hat. It was Tom and I. When the floor manager told us that the winning couple would be dancing to ‘Time of My Life’ from Dirty Dancing, I raised my eyes in disbelief as if to say to God, ‘Are you having me on?’ for that was the very tune Brendan and his celebrity newsreader had danced to when they won the first season, a time when my life was falling apart. Now, it felt like closure, and if drawing our names from the hat had been tempting fate, this felt like a really good omen. Brendan and Lisa went out first that night. And then it was just Tom and I against Vincent and Rachel. The tune we’d chosen for our last dance was ‘If They Could See Me Now’ from Sweet Charity. The song meant a lot to both of us. We’d been yearning to get this far. Tom and I had often talked about our early days when we’d had little but hope to keep us going: when he was driving vans and delivering parcels and I was dusting shelves in Mulberry. If we could have seen ourselves then as we were now …

If we could have seen ourselves then as we were now

When Tess Daly sent us on to the stage with the words, ‘This is your chance!’ I knew everything was riding on the next few minutes. But we really lost ourselves in the dance, really lived in the now, and it felt so wonderful that, when we finished, I thought that even if we left with the trophy, the evening couldn’t get any better than it already was.

But, a few minutes later, when Bruce Forsyth, a man I love to bits, announced, ‘And the winner is …’ his words followed by the usual dramatic pause, my heart felt like it had paused, too, in one of those protracted moments when you can’t believe you’ll ever get to hear what comes next.

Then it happened. ‘Tom and Camilla!’ I flung myself at Tom, both of us hugging, crying, laughing and jumping up and down on the spot, and moments later, there we were, tears still wet on our cheeks, dancing to ‘Time of My Life’, and it was the perfect end to my Strictly career. Brendan was there to witness it and sitting in the front row, by complete coincidence, was his celeb partner from season one.

Saying goodbye

A few days later I broke the news that I would not be returning to the show. My decision attracted plenty of criticism. ‘How can you leave the best show on TV?’ people asked. ‘How can you go when you’re right at the top?’ I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t expect them to understand that unfortunately, after five years, I couldn’t grow any further with the brand, and needed to move on from a job that was a constant reminder of the most painful episode of my life.

Truth be told, deep down I wished there was some way I could have stayed with Strictly – as a judge, maybe, or as a presenter. But there weren’t any openings at the time, and leaving the show was the only way I could now change direction.

Fortunately, as well as critics I had my supporters who told me how brave I was. Brave because I was giving up the security of lucrative regular work and stepping into the unknown. And that, as I know as a life coach, is one of the hardest things any of us can do.

Leaving any job when you don’t have another one lined up is always tough – even if that job is low paid and bad for your morale. But leaving a job that you enjoy, one that has shaped your career, brought you fame, made you a household name? Who does that when they don’t have something much better to go to?

But I had to listen to my soul and it was telling me that I was no longer happy and no amount of fame or money could change that.

I needed a break, and I needed it so badly that the minute I announced my departure, I felt as if a tidal wave of tiredness had caught up with me, a wave that had been building up for months without me noticing. But now, with that announcement, I’d let down the barrier that had been holding it at bay.

I had been working pretty much seven days a week for the previous five months. But before I gave in completely and could find the time to flop on my bed if that’s what I wanted to do, Tom and I had to complete a two-month Strictly tour – dancing in London, Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Glasgow.

It felt like a really long, drawn-out goodbye – the kind when you just want to get in the car and drive off, but keep on remembering that you’ve left something behind and keep having to go back. And it wasn’t made any easier that everywhere we went people kept telling me, ‘You’re mad to leave! Why are you doing it?’

Thank goodness my skin had got thicker over the years. ‘B***** to them,’ I thought. ‘What gives them the right to think they know what feels right for me? How do they know what my dreams and desires are?’ Just because I had danced for most of my life didn’t mean that I had to carry on doing it for the rest of it.

Giving love a chance

As well as feeling more tired than I had thought possible, there was also another reason for leaving, and one that I shared with nobody else. I thought it was a good time to leave because I had found a man who I felt deeply deserved someone who could take a day off once in a while. I knew I needed to develop a good work-life balance. I decided to live in the now as I gave myself time to work out where my life was going to take me next.

For the length of that final Strictly tour, I felt as if I was fighting a cold. I was worn out and run down. I was emotionally wrung out, too. Back in the dressing rooms on the night of our very last performance, Lilia Kopylova gave me a lovely farewell card and gift, but as we went to take up our positions on stage and she reached out to hug me, I had to put my hands up to stop her. ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘I’m only just holding it together. If you hug me I’ll cry.’

I’d known Lilia since I was 16. She ignored what I’d said, and, as the music started, she gave me a huge hug. Peeping out over her shoulder I caught sight of Ian, who was also on the tour, and the tears started to roll down my cheeks. But they were tears of contentment as well as sadness. It was a beautiful moment of closure, and, when Tom and I finished our last dance together, I knew I was ready to go.