Sky 1's Pineapple Dance Studios has made Louie Spence a celebrity at last ? after 30 years hard slog as a professional dancer. And he intends to enjoy every moment
Not since John Inman floated across the floor of Grace Brothers department store trilling "I'm free" and fluttering his hands in the manner of an overexcitable beauty queen, has there been anybody quite like Louie Spence on British TV. Sure, we've had our Graham Nortons and our Paul O'Gradys, but next to Louie Spence they look like the kind of rugged heterosexuals whose idea of a fancy night out is slipping on an M&S fleece and phoning for a takeaway. But then, Louie Spence seems to have been born camp. He's lisped since he could talk, has danced since he was five, seems unable to walk down a street if he can pirouette instead, and wears those alarming men's cleavage T-shirts of the sort Pat Phoenix used to sport on Coronation Street 30 years ago.
All of which would suggest that he might be the most irritating man in Britain. And yet, somehow, he isn't. Or at least, he isn't most of the time. Because as well as being as mannered as a French farce, he's also quite winningly natural, his Essex council estate sensibility never far from the surface. On top of which, as well as being exhibitionist, touchy, petulant, bitchy, childish, and at times, the prissiest of prima donnas, he can also be very funny and has a genuinely brilliant way with words. It is what made him the undisputed star of Sky 1's Pineapple Dance Studios last year, and has since propelled him into the thick of celebritydom. There have been appearances on Jonathan Ross and Chris Moyles, photospreads in OK!, a column in Heat, a part in panto, he's triumphed on both Loose Women and Radio 5's Men's Hour, and he's been across the Christmas schedules like a rash ? cooked for by Jamie Oliver on Jamie's Christmas Lock-In; giving an alternative Queen's speech on Sky 1.
And now, there's his new series, the follow-up to Pineapple Dance Studios, renamed in his honour Louie Spence's Showbusiness, slightly unfortunately since as he points out, he can't actually pronounce it ? "Louie Thpence's Showbuthneth" is about as close as he gets. The launch, at a snazzy London hotel, is the most bizarre showbiz party I've ever seen. As well as the male stripper group the Dreamboys, there is in attendance a really quite convincing David Beckham lookalike, a posse of glamour blondes, and Michael Buerk. Michael Buerk! And then I remember that he did the voiceover for the show. It's part of what helped make Pineapple Dance Studios such a success ? it had the look and feel of a mockumentary while being, however unbelievably, real. Or mostly real, give or take the odd dancing policeman.
When I question Buerk on why he took the role, he starts off by saying "it's probably career suicide, isn't it?" and then "I honestly thought that no one would see it," although he admits he secretly rather enjoys it, "although John Humphrys rather delighted in upbraiding me for doing it."
The fact is that it's been a huge hit for Sky, a new sort of playful semi-doc, with something of the joyfulness of Fame about it, and a not inconsiderable part of its success has been down to the lisping, sashaying exhibitionist never far from the centre of the action: Louie Spence. In the first episode of Pineapple Dance Studios, he oversaw an audition for a new dance troupe, and leapt out from behind his desk to backflip the length of the (really quite long) studio. He is an irrepressible show-off, but, unusually for TV, he does have actual talents to show off.
At the launch he is, naturally, in his element. Because while he's only found TV fame at the relatively advanced age of 41, he's been a performer all his life, and doing jazz hands for any paparazzi who might happen to be passing comes as naturally to him as breathing.
"The thing is that it's a performance. And that's part of who I am. I can't help it. Now if I go out somewhere I'll be in the paper, but even before if I went somewhere with my friends, we'd all be like that. I'd be swinging around a tree. Or doing a high kick. That's just me. If they want to take a picture, I don't care! I have nothing to lose."
I meet him in the office of Pineapple Dance Studios, the Covent Garden institution he became artistic director of when he retired from professional dancing a decade ago. His office used to be on the ground floor next to reception "but I'd become a tourist attraction, so I've had to move up to the top floor. But I'm still present. I'm still here every day. This is what I class as my real job. What has happened has been amazing, but I've done this all my life and it's my backbone. The rest of it might dry up in a moment."
But then there's nothing like overnight success when you've been working at it for nearly 30 years. He grew up in Braintree, Essex, and went to the local Doreen Cliff's dance school with his sisters on a Saturday morning to give his mum a break. "It was just me and a lot of little girls. All the other boys were out doing boy things. They were out playing football. Where I just liked dancing around. I suppose it was that gay gene, darling, kicking in from a very early age. It was definitely nature not nurture for me."
I read somewhere that your mother said she knew you were gay from the age of five, I say.
"Yeah she did. I got a letter from her when I was 19. My sister had told her I was gay. I didn't think it was necessary, I knew that they knew so what's the point? Anyway, I got a letter from her, saying 'I knew long before you knew'."
He's still very close to them. His sisters are still in Essex ? "they breed like rabbits down there" ? and there's an episode in Pineapple Dance Studios in which he goes off to have botox with his mum, Pat. "I only did it because she wanted it and I could get it free with the show. I mean, it's about �350 a pop! Why not?" He's refreshingly upfront on the subject of celebrity freebies. "But then I'm council darling, you get what you can get." His mum used to buy the children party clothes, and keep the tags in "then hang them up by the window and take them back to the shop", but then, that's not so surprising when you learn that they remortgaged the house they bought under "right to buy" in order to send Louie to Italia Conti stage school.
From there, he landed a part in the West End in Bugsy Malone, aged 13, and then the BBC's, Wayne Sleep's Hot Shoe Show. After leaving school without a single GCSE, he became a professional dancer with roles in Miss Saigon and Cats, and, most memorably, spent a year as a backing dancer with the Spice Girls on their world tour. "It was incredible, like being in a bubble, I mean they literally couldn't walk down the street, it was police escorts everywhere." He's still good friends with Emma Bunton ? "we just had very similar backgrounds; council, hard-working parents, same sense of humour." And since his new-found success, he's been around to dinner at the Beckhams, as he boasts in the opening two minutes of the new show. "It's all changed," he announces. "I'm huge now."
But then, he's not exactly one to hide his light under a bushel. You don't suffer from a lack of confidence, do you, Louie?
"No, I don't. I'm very confident with who I am. Although I have many many insecurities like everybody."
Like what?
"As a dancer you're so disciplined, about keeping yourself in shape, sticking to a routine. I get very disappointed in myself if I don't feel like I've done my best. You have so many knockbacks and disappointments, you're constantly trying to battle with yourself. I've got to do better. I've got to do better. I don't think that will ever leave me."
He might have leapt to fame via a reality TV show, but it's perfectly obvious that Louie Spence is not a reality TV show star. When he says "showbusiness is my life", he's not exaggerating. "Without these people and what I do, I don't feel alive. This is what I do. It's who I am."
He's been around the industry for such a long time that it holds no surprises. "I've had lots of famous friends, so it's meant that I've gone to these premieres and events, and I've seen what it's like from that side. Now the focus is on me. But I know how unreal it is. And it's just for the moment, until somebody else comes along. I'm just going to have fun with it while it's here."
In some ways, the amazing thing is that it's taken this long. Jonathan Stadlen, the show's executive producer, says that he was looking for ideas for docu-soaps and went down to Pineapple. "I met Louie Spence about five seconds after I walked through the door, and then a very good-looking man walked past and Louie turned around and said, 'Ooh, my sphincter is fluttering like feeding time in a koi carp pond!' He's just made for television. He's such a natural show-off."
It has been a remarkable year. Kate Moss decided to befriend him, and Kylie raved about him on her Twitter stream ("All hail Louie Spence!"), which, he says, "for a gay man is like being knighted". Although there's already been a backlash. The compilers of the Independent on Sunday's pink power list put him in their "rogues' gallery", calling him one of the "greatest re-enforcers of gay stereotypes". Stephen Fry leapt to his defence. Louie just shrugs when I bring it up. "I just thought who are you to make a judgment on me? For being who I am? If I'm stereotypical, well so are lots of gay people. There's many different types of gay people, but so what? Get a life? I mean it's 2010, who cares?"
He was never bullied at school, he says, "I think because I made people laugh." But he was a teenager when Aids emerged, and the TV adverts of tombstones had a huge impact on him. "It frightened the life out of me. From a young age, I thought, 'I've got HIV and I'm going to die.' I hadn't really met gay people then and I thought I must have HIV because I'm gay. I think maybe that's why I have so many phobias and insecurities now."
He's not so confident, after all, it turns out. He suffered from panic attacks for years ? "even now I get it. I was doing Chris Moyles the other day and I was sitting back with Jonathan Ross and all of a sudden I got a wave. I thought 'Oh no, I can't have it now!' It comes from nowhere, and I think that anyone who has panic attacks, or anxiety, will understand that."
Still, the show must go on. And he's the consummate pro. "I can't not work. If I get asked to do something now, I always want to do more. They're like, 'You're done, now.' And I've been there, like, 10 minutes. And I'm like, 'No!' As a dancer, if you're doing a shoot, you are there at six in the morning until 12 at night and you don't get a cab home even if it's pissing with rain. I'm just used to really grafting. Even doing this interview, I just want to make sure that I do the best I can."
And he does. He doesn't backflip down the corridor, but before I go I get a short blast of jazz hands. Get used to it: I've a feeling we're going to be seeing an awful lot more of them.
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