Brendan Cole is already preparing to do battle in Strictly Come Dancing again at Christmas, having been voted off the show with Victoria Pendleton. Viv Hardwick talks to him about the TV show and his latest dance tour, which is based on James Bond.... and beyond

BRENDAN COLE is proud of being the first Strictly Come Dancing professional to come up with the idea of taking his dance skills and choreography out on a UK national tour, but fans of the TV show are equally impressed by his ability to keep Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton in the contest so long this year.

The New Zealander, who has cleverly called his next dance tour to The Sage Gateshead Licence To Thrill, beams with pride as I congratulate him doing so well with Pendleton in spite of her total lack of confidence in her own ability.

“It was a strange one. Everyone was a bit surprised because she had all the right credentials to be phenomenal but, as it turned out, had never done any kind of performance like this before and struggled with confidence as a dancer. I think we did extremely well and eight weeks in Strictly was a great achievement,” he says.

Cole admits that he found the situation really difficult because Strictly puts him in the position of being “an entertainer, a performer, a teacher and coach and quite often a psychologist”.

“You’ve really got to understand how other people work and adapt so that you’re getting the best out of them and you’re getting value for money for what you’re putting in. Victoria and I did struggle with things like that, but we got on really well,” says Cole, who laughs about being called a Strictly veteran – having won the first show in 2003 with Natasha Kaplinsky.

“After ten years, and at the ripe old age of 36, I’m a veteran. I won the first series and I’ve had some great partners and I’m actually working with a former partner Kelly Brook again on the Christmas special. So I was straight back into the studio with Kelly after I was knocked out,” he says.

“It’s nice when you stay friendly with a celebrity partner... because, with some of them, you just don’t.

I think that’s why I’ve lasted so long in Strictly because I’ve managed to work with most people, but I stress the word ‘most’,” Cole adds.

He’s reflecting on that 2003 win which saw his engagement to fellow professional Camilla Dallerup collapse before Cole opted for marriage to model Zoe Hobbs and impending fatherhood.

“I’ve heard I’m supposed to be a hard taskmaster with celebrity partners, but I don’t think I am. I’ve always worked on pushing a partner’s capabilities to the maximum, I don’t think you can do anything else on Strictly. I think too many people aren’t used to working as hard as we do on Strictly and luckily for me Victoria was used to working hard, so that was never an issue,” Cole says.

HE defends the BBC’s decision to allow celebrities with dance training like Denise van Outen and Dani Harmer to compete against total novices like Pendleton. “If you start as a good dancer and finish as a good dancer then it’s pretty boring. If you start out as good and become very good then you’re doing your job. Victoria struggled because she thought she had to be a great dancer, but she just had to do the best she could,” he says.

Re-focusing on Licence To Thrill, the link to James Bond and the 50th year celebrations, came out of Cole wanting to use two songs from the film franchise. “One of the big songs is Live And Let Die which is big dance-off between the boys in the show which is pretty exciting stuff and the other is Licence To Kill, the Gladys Knight song. Because it was the 50th year of Bond and the fact that we’d got fantastic reviews the previous yea,r I wanted to take a step that was a notch up.

“I decided that the tour had to be sophisticated and that I must change the look a little bit. So Licence To Thrill allowed us to throw around a few ideas and I quickly realised how we could display this and allow us to show the Bond golds and reds. It was so important for me to come up with something unique,” he says.

“I always think there is something so magical about Bond and you always know what you’re in for. He’s a classy, smooth and debonair character and suits my leading lady Fauve Hauto, from France, who is very much a Bond girl,” adds Cole.

HAUTO has reached the final of this year’s Dancing With The Stars on French TV and joins the 20-strong cast of 14 on-stage musicians and six world class dancers, who include Cole’s brother Scott, Australian Melanie Hooper and Germany’s Patrick Helm.

“This is more than a dance show, this is chat, live performance and something that has to be absolutely beautiful and pleasing to all, because I’m aware that a lot of guys will have been dragged along by their wives. So I really want something for the guys to watch as well. So a dancer like Fauve is something for them, but I’m focusing on entertaining young and old with music from Buble to Bond with Sinatra and Luther van Dross. I prefer a mixture of ballroom and latin.

“I don’t feel under any pressure from the other professional stars of Strictly who go out on tour because I’m proud of touring for four years and being one of the first who did it. The only pressure I’m under is for my show to be better than it was the previous year. I think I have an advantage of being an across-theboard dancer who can host an event ,” Cole says.

  • Brendan Cole, Licence To Thrill, The Sage Gateshead. Box Office: 0191-443-4661 thesagegateshead.org