All Balls and Glitter (40 page)

As we sat in the gutter trying to deal with this emergency, people all around us started shouting, ‘Oh my God, it’s Craig Revel Horwood from
Dancing with the Stars
!’ and before we knew it, there was a crowd gathering. The programme’s popularity really soared that series – the ratings shot up to 1.3 million, which is a massive third of the population – so my profile was higher than ever. It was the last thing we needed that night. Luckily, Erina made a full recovery, although she did look like she’d gone twelve rounds with Mike Tyson when all the bruising came out.

Having survived the John Sergeant debacle in the UK, I experienced a similar situation in NZ, when an entertainer called
John Rowles decided to leave
Dancing with the Stars
due to ill health. When they told me, I said, ‘Oh no, I’ve just been through one of these!’ John Rowles is very famous in NZ, so he was a high-profile person to have on the show and it was disappointing to hear that he was dropping out.

His doctor said he was suffering from exhaustion and wasn’t fit enough to continue – but I don’t think he took kindly to the judges’ comments as his routines weren’t going well. However, he made a miraculous recovery just in time for his own tour. I’m not saying his doctor didn’t advise him to drop out – just that he should have got a second opinion!

I got into trouble again for one of my comments about another contestant during the series. There was a full-figured actress called Geraldine Brophy competing, and I said her waltz ‘reminded me of the dancing elephants in
Fantasia
– absolutely beautiful’. The audience went completely silent, all jaws dropped to the ground – but it really wasn’t a backhanded compliment. Those who have seen the dancing elephants in
Fantasia
will know that they are absolutely gorgeous. They do a beautiful, graceful waltz and then the hippos take over. There was no disguising the fact that this was a large lady, and her lovely waltz simply reminded me of that scene! The press were down on me like a ton of bricks for calling her a dancing elephant, but it wasn’t intended as an insult.

My fellow judge Brendan Cole was also up to his usual tricks, goading me constantly to get a reaction, so we had a good few rows. During one programme, I told him he needed a CAT scan and was two sheep short of a sweater.

I was really pleased to get back to the southern hemisphere – and not just for work. Most importantly, I had a chance to see my family again. I’m going to try to see them more often in the future because I feel now, as I get older, that I’m missing out. I’m starting to feel the distance, yet the busier I get in London, the less able I am to go off and see people, so I have to make the decision either
to knock something on the head, or to find work that will take me to Australia.

While I always miss my relatives, I was particularly pleased to catch up with them that year, as in February their lives had been threatened by the ferocious bush fires that swept Australia for a whole month. Ballarat was near the bush fires, and so was Melbourne. My sister Susan lives in Lower Plenty, Melbourne, surrounded by trees, and the bush fires were thirty minutes away from them.

At the time, they were ringing me and saying that they didn’t know what to do. Everything was so dry; it was hideous. They had packed their car, ready to go at a moment’s notice – but people were getting caught as they fled.

You can’t understand how bad it is until you are actually there and you hear the trees exploding. It’s terrifying; the sound of exploding gum trees in particular is awful. I remember that sound as a child.

Bush fires are normal, you see, but not on this scale. Regular bush fires burn the trees to ashes and enrich the soil: that’s how Australia works. It’s natural and there are normally firebreaks, where the ground has been bulldozed, so that a fire can be contained. But if a fire spreads all around you, there’s nothing you can do.

I wrote desperate emails to my sister, saying, ‘Just leave! Now! Take a holiday for two weeks, pack the kids up and go.’ I was desperately worried and felt particularly powerless, but they stayed put despite my pleas. Fortunately, they came out unscathed.

I was therefore delighted that Sue came over to stay with Grant and me in New Zealand while we were there. Grant’s mum, Gail – who is only six years older than me – and my mum came along too.

This visit to NZ was completely different to the previous year because Grant and my relationship had developed now, so we weren’t still wondering about one another. We’d been together
well over a year, and I’d given Grant a gorgeous ring on Valentine’s Day – a simple band with ten diamonds – to show how much I loved him and wanted to be with him.

It was sort of like an engagement ring, but marriage is still a question mark in my mind, because of all I’ve been through with Jane and Lloyd and everybody else in my life. When I think of all the opportunities I’ve had that haven’t worked out, it makes me nervous. If you want to share your love with someone, I don’t believe you need a piece of paper to prove it. A ring signifies the same: that you want to be with that person, you belong to them and you will remain faithful. I’m not religious, but I believe in symbolism, and that’s why I chose the ring.

The lovely thing is that all my friends and family adore Grant too. My friend Amber has just made him godfather to her second son Digby. This honour gave Grant a brand-new nickname – ‘Auntie Grantie’.

Funnily enough, people think my accent is rubbing off on Grant when they meet him – but just for the record, he gained his qualification for pharmacy in Australia, studying there for seven years from the age of twenty-one, so he has a bona fide Aussie accent. That at least is not my bad influence!

In New Zealand, I hired the same penthouse apartment as I had the year before. This time, we discovered that it had an extra floor. When we arrived, Sue went off to explore, then came down the stairs and said, ‘There’s an open door up there which goes into a whole other apartment.’

‘I don’t think that’s for us,’ I said, but when I looked, I found plates of welcome food and drink laid out and a note saying, ‘Welcome back, Craig, there’s champagne in the fridge and crudités.’ I couldn’t believe it. I was screaming. The place was huge! Just a shame I didn’t know that the year before …

The apartment is stuffed full of expensive paintings and ornaments worth hundreds of thousands. It overlooks the harbour where the ferries come in from Wellington. My friend Ross
kindly took us out on his yacht around the Marlborough Sounds, which was absolutely gorgeous. The water was deep blue and crystal clear so we could see all the blue cod swimming around. It was breathtaking.

As a special treat, Grant and I took Mum, Sue and Gail to Wharekauhau, on the North Island, for dinner. Wharekauhau is an estate on a sheep station that’s been done up to the most amazing spec for private fine dining. You pay about NZ$500, which is about £200, to get a helicopter over to the estate and then enjoy mouth-watering food in a unique setting.

The trip was one of the hairiest journeys of my life. That day, the weather conditions were the windiest in which you could possibly be permitted to fly. The helicopter was only a tiny little craft and, as we went over the mountains, we were blown sideways. I’m a nervous flyer anyway, as is my mum, so we were both yelling our heads off. Gail was the only one loving it, but then she’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie.

Once we got over the mountains, the weather cleared up and we had beautiful sunshine, a wonderful meal and the day couldn’t have been better. We got back on the helicopter, slightly tipsy, to learn that it had to go around the peninsula because of the wind, so on the way home we got a brilliant view of the coastline. It was just a-maz-ing.

From New Zealand, I flew to Australia, while Grant flew home. My sister Diane and I went to see my father’s side of the family in Perth, which was excellent as I managed to get to my grandfather’s grave for the first time. That was weird – because I was looking at a grave that almost has my name on it. He was Revel C. Horwood instead of C. Revel Horwood. It felt very spooky.

I hadn’t seen that side of the family for twenty-two years, since I was in
Sugar Babies
, and there were lots of lovely memories there for me. My aunt gave me a special photo of Mozza and myself in the bush: I’m standing on a rock, doing an arabesque, while he tries to emulate me.

They also showed me an old 8 mm film shot before our family moved to England. There was lots of footage of me aged three, Sue aged four and Di as a young toddler. It was remarkable seeing moving colour footage of us, because we have only stills from that era and it was the first time I’d seen myself in action as a child. It was a bizarre thing to watch.

I was in Perth for Mother’s Day. I spent it with my grandmother Phonse. She’s ninety-two now and still giving it large. I got a lot of family recipes from her as I’m hoping to put together a book of the dishes I grew up with, my family’s favourites and the ones I cooked on
Celebrity Masterchef
. Talking to Phonse was, as ever, fascinating. Who knows if I’ll get the chance again? I made the most of every moment.

As my visit to Oz drew to a close, I just had time for a whistle-stop trip to Ballarat. I had one day there with my mum and we crammed everything in. I caught up with my ex-girlfriend Deanne; she’s married with kids now, but still as mad as ever. We stayed up talking into the very early hours, getting to bed around six in the morning. I also got together with some of the people from Ballarat Lyric Theatre, and managed to squeeze in a meeting with the Ballarat Arts Foundation to discuss setting up the Craig Revel Horwood Award for Contemporary Dance and Choreography.

This annual award will go towards helping a young student achieve their dream of becoming a dancer or choreographer. It feels very special to give back to the very town that gave me that opportunity in the first place, and to give someone new a helping hand.

The last thing I did was to go to the trout farm to see Dad. He’s got six sheep now, as well as the fish. They’re all called Dorothy – yet only one of them is a ewe. He opens the gate and they come flooding into the garden to nibble at the windows.

Dad is still drinking copious amounts. Every waking moment, he’s cracking open a beer, but that’s just the way it’s going to be now. I’ve had to learn to accept that about him, because that will
not change. If you accept it, it makes life a whole lot easier to deal with. Otherwise you torture yourself, and what’s the point of that?

We talked about this book, and he said he had been quite taken aback by it in the beginning, but once he read through it again, in a sober light, he understood a little bit more about himself, about me and about our relationship. It has really calmed things down between us. Now, everything is out in the open, which helps the two of us to put the past behind us.

I was back in London by the middle of May to do a photo shoot in drag. Lavish wasn’t rearing her beautiful head again – far from it. Rather, the photo shoot was staged to launch a new venture, as I had agreed to take on the role of the Wicked Queen in
Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs
over Christmas 2009 at the Venue Cymru in Llandudno, Wales.

I’d always thought that panto was something I never wanted to direct or be involved with … until I was offered this headlining job. I think the on-screen perception of me as ‘Mr Nasty’ makes me naturally suited to the role! The production will give the public an opportunity to have a good old go at booing me, which will be fun. The gig will be hard work too, however, with two shows a day right through the Christmas calendar. And I have to say that the thought of wearing heels again doesn’t entirely thrill me – but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do …

More pressing than the panto in summer 2009 was my next production at the Watermill Theatre. I was going back to my roots:
Spend Spend Spend
presented an array of challenges when I began to rehearse it in June 2009 as an actor/muso show, my fourth to date. I was very much looking forward to staging the musical in a smaller space – and setting the entire evening in a Yorkshire pub. The scenes would unfold within that great British tradition.

The most difficult thing for me was forgetting what I’d previously choreographed ten years earlier. I had to come up with
fresh ways to tell the story. I suffered countless moments of déjà vu as we worked through the numbers, recalling the great times I’d had creating the original show. It was a wonderful adventure.

I discovered how much I’d grown, not only as a director, but also as a person. There’s nothing like life experience to help inform scenes. This time around, I felt like I really understood the piece, and could really get my teeth into the story and tell it as honestly as was humanly possible. There’s something about revisiting the past: if only on reflection, you tend to see things as they truly are.

From Ballarat to the Beeb, my life, so far, has been a varied dance. In parts, a sexy salsa or a dramatic explosive tango. Occasionally, a sedate waltz. It’s been out of time and wobbly in places, but sometimes it has achieved the perfect steps.

Overall, it’s been an entertaining, show-stopping … nine.

One thing it has certainly never been is dull, dull, dull!