Anton Du Beke: ‘This one thing could have stopped me joining Strictly’
We can't imagine the ballroom without him!
Anton Du Beke’s hips were swinging. His cheeky chappy smile was on full beam. His arms swooped up into the air in one gracefully smooth manner.
The scene may have you thinking I was rewatching one of his Strictly Come Dancing routines on YouTube, perhaps his Paso Doble with Ruth Langsford or Viennese Waltz with Emma Barton, but actually, Anton, 58, was doing something else entirely.
While his love for dance is pretty obvious to anybody who’s ever turned into BBC on a Saturday evening in the autumn/winter since 2004, there is another sport that he’s equally fond of and he’s now letting the world know about it with a brand-new podcast Putt & Strut. If you haven’t yet got it from the title, it is golf.
To celebrate the launch, Anton and his co-host Sarah Stirk invited us to Pitch, a golf club in central London, to discuss their new project.
In between taking swings at the virtual golfing game, Anton was just as enthusiastic and chatty as when he is sat behind the desk on Strictly.
After asking us what we want from life, and insisting I talk him through my vision board (yep, that happened), we made Anton the subject of questioning as he’s the person of interest after all. We asked if he’d be up for The Traitors. Only if he can be a Faithful.
Strictly made Anton a household name (Picture: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire)It’s just days after his episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? aired, in which Anton ended up paying £15,000 of his own money to The Sick Children’s Trust after getting a question on musicals wrong, so we couldn’t help enquiring about that too. Anton informed us he was getting the bank details that afternoon to make the transfer. He doesn’t think watching the episode back is something he’ll ever be able to do.
His fame on Strictly – first as a dancer, now as a judge – means that he’s become a household name, and popping up on these types of shows has become a regular occurrence. However, that may never have happened, or at least, he would have been famous for an entirely different reason if the timing had been different. If he’d step (bull changed) in an alternative direction perhaps.
‘I could have quite happily taken up golf if I’d stumbled into it before dance,’ Anton revealed to Metro and a small group of media. Instead, he started playing at age 16 after a man at his dance school in San Francisco suggested Anton join him at a golf course. This was a whole six years after he began dancing. By this point, he was already competing and so golf was a hobby, rather than a way to earn a living.
A world in which Anton doesn’t drag Ann Widdecombe across the Strictly dance floor is not one we want to live in, so we’re glad the cards fell this way.
Anton has been on Strictly since it began in 2004 (Picture: BBC/Kieron McCarron) In an alternative universe, it wasn’t Anton dragging Anne Widdlecombe across the Strictly dance floor (Picture: Global)‘Dance and golfing are not a thing of perfection so you’re always striving for the next level. You’re always trying to bring more to the role so I would have taken up golf with the same mentality and mindset as dancing,’ he said about his alternative life.
Although, he added with a smile: ‘But I’m not sure if I’d have made any money.’
The age a person begins a sport is often a factor in how successful they can become, Anton pointed out, so he was proud to tell us his seven-year-old twin children George and Henrietta with his wife Hannah Summer are starting to express interest in golf.
‘I do hope that they become massively successful so they can keep their father in his old age,’ he joked.
‘I love nothing more than playing golf with my wife, and I’m looking forward to the children getting a bit older, not rushing them mind you, so we can do golf days. I can’t think of anything more thrilling for me than that.
‘The first day we sit on a golf buggy and roll out the first tee will make my entire life.’
Anton enjoys playing golf with his wife Hannah (Picture: Mike Marsland/WireImage)Although golf isn’t Anton’s primary source of income, it helps him in a different way. Playing a few rounds is what helps Anton take care of his mental health.
‘It’s the place I go to, to get away from it all is a bit sort of extreme, but it’s my happy place, which is a bit extreme as well,’ he said, debating with himself on the definition of its role.
‘I like to grab the clubs and go play golf on my own. It gives you time to mull things over, and most things are dealt with better by not doing anything, just thinking.
‘Somebody said to me, you’re better at dealing with a situation by thinking for half an hour and after that, you’ll find you can deal with it. It quietens the mind.’
The chatter about all things green has Anton feeling like a walk down memory lane, specifically, reminiscing about golf fan Sir Bruce Forsyth, who is his ‘great hero’. His impact on Anton’s life cannot be underestimated, it was Forsyth’s name being attached to Strictly that convinced him to sign up.
‘That was the real hook for me,’ he summarised.
Forsyth was a huge reason for Anton joining Strictly (Picture: BBC)He first got to be in the same room as Forsyth, who died age 89 in 2017, for the Strictly press launch held at Claridge’s hotel. He claims that even members of the press were silent as what went on to become the BBC’s biggest show was introduced to the world.
‘We got chatting that day in May, and by July, he’d invited me and Len [Goodman, Strictly judge], who was a wonderful man [Goodman died age 78 in 2023] to come to his house,’ Anton recalled.
‘We drove up the gate in Len’s car because he had a nicer one than me. We played at Wentworth Golf Club and then went back to Bruce’s house which overlooked the course for afternoon tea. We were a bit giddy, to be honest with you, it was the most wonderful day. I couldn’t believe it. We sort of pinched ourselves a little bit.
‘I was fortunate enough to become firm friends with Brucey for many years and we did lots of things together but he never let me win.’
Despite Forsyth refusing to let Anton win, there are no hard feelings of course and he’s still celebrating the man that went from hero to friend.
‘Brucey was the number one entertainer. I always felt that if he was in America, he’d have probably been even more famous. He was the most famous person in this country, but he’d have been a global sensation because he was that good,’ he stated.
Putt and Strutt is Anton’s latest passion (Picture: Global)Now, Anton is celebrating his own career as it enters an era of complete freedom. He’s built up enough of a fandom that he can pack out theatres on his dancing tour, write bestselling novels, and even start up a podcast about a seemingly random subject with his friend, Sky Sports presenter Sarah. The pair have become firm friends due to their shared passion and dreamt up this podcast idea together.
Each week they’ll chat to stars including Jodie Kidd, James Nesbitt, Adrian Chiles, and Anton’s former Strictly partner Judy Murray about their golfing game and life in general. ‘Judy is the nicest person in the world, by the way,’ Anton divulged, before sharing that they spent just as much time playing tennis together as dancing during Strictly. That could explain some of the threes!
Sarah explained their new project’s joint mission to us: ‘There are lots of got very golfy podcasts out there, but we want to really kind of fuse the two elements of golf and entertainment, and just show it’s such a wonderfully addictive, brilliant game that appeals to the masses.
‘People may be put off thinking it will take a lot of time and money, but there are ways for everyone to enjoy it. There are driving ranges you can go to for £12,’ Sarah argued.
Anton continued: ‘We are more excited about non-golfers listening than the golfers.’
Putt & Strut with Anton Du Beke and Sarah Stirk is available to listen to now on Global Player, and all major podcast platforms
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