Louie Spence Biography

'Before all of this (fame) I was just a working dancer, and if I had to walk around as a chicken, I walked around as a chicken. And so be it. I didn’t lay any eggs.’
Louie, on the reality of life before stardom

For a man synonymous with innuendo, it’s perhaps inevitable that Louie was born in 1969. Raised on a North London council estate, Louie lisped his first words, was academically awful, but when he started dancing at the age of five, he shone.
Every Saturday morning, he went with his sisters to the local dance centre in Essex, donned his blue Lycra leotard and ‘high kicked his ass off’. Such extracurricular activities, coupled with a lisp, would make many a target for bullying at school. But Louie, ever the entertainer, simply made the bullies laugh, and left, with a flourish (of course), unhurt.

Other colourful characters from his family included Nanny Lock (so called because she came from Enfield Lock) and Nanny Twinkle and Downer. He used to nick cans of Special Brew for them by hiding it one of their wheelchairs.

His mother, Pat, soon realised he was gay, (long before he did) and she and his father were not only accepting of this, but extremely encouraging of his dance aspirations.
They remortgaged their newly bought council house to fund their twelve year old son’s attendance at the Italia Conti Performing Art School.
Before then, he’d tried fooling around with the girls, but there he realised it was OK to be gay, and to believe that dance was the only thing that mattered.

But being a teenager when Aids first emerged into public consciousness caused him a lot of confusion and he mistakenly thought that because he was gay, he must have HIV. This explains, he says, why ever since, he’s been a hypochondriac. And despite his confident outgoing persona, he still suffers from anxiety attacks.
But acutely aware of the sacrifices his parents were making, Louie had (and still has) a relentless work ethic which meant he was the first one sweating in the dance studio in the morning, and the last one there at night.

This commitment lead to a part in the West End in Bugsy Malone aged just 13, and then in the Wayne Sleep fronted BBC series, The Hot Shoe Show. But his first proper professional job was as a dancer in Miss Saigon which was lucky because he left school without even one GCSE.

He moved to Italy to work on a TV series which his website says involved him dancing alongside stars not normally known for their stage moves, such as Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder.
Louie returned to London in the 90s and worked as a backing dancer on tours for everybody from Bjork and Boyzone to the techno troupe, 2 Unlimited. He also became friends with some of his employers and in 1995, it wasn’t unusual for all the boys from Take That to party on at his place. But his best friend was, and probably still is, Emma Bunton, from The Spice Girls. Their similar work ethic and working class backgrounds made them forever friends. (One of his favourite ‘on tour’ anecdotes involves the Spice Girls filling up with petrol in their pyjamas).
He spent 1998 with Emma, and the other girls, touring the world.

When he returned to London, he found work on old classics like Cats and experimental new ones like The Pet Shop Boys debut musical.

But the new Millennium didn’t start well for Louie. On New Years Eve 2000, he was struck with Bells Palsy (a condition from which his sister also suffered). It paralysed one side of his face and it was not, he says, ‘a good look’. His face has never properly ‘snapped back’ and one of the reasons he always smiles so widely is because he can’t smile gently; the nerves to do so simply don’t work.
On top of this, the West End routine of eight shows every seven days soon began to burn him out. A dancer’s life is not a long one and Louie realised it was time to hang up the dancing shoes. He joined up with the Covent Garden based Pineapple Dance Studios. Founded by Debbie Moore in a derelict church hall, Louie helped her put it on the dance map. He became its artistic director which, as he explains, isn’t as glamorous or executive as the title may suggest:

‘It means I do a bit of this and I bit of that and I rush round everywhere, I’m like a rash darling. I spread myself everywhere. Every job is mine. I have had to clean up poo from downstairs. Someone missed the toilet, twice, and done it on the doorstep.’

But whatever his routine, his reputation grew and soon Kylie, Mariah Carey and Robbie Williams were just some of the stars that had him on speed-dial when they needed dancers and choreographers.

With a lot of crossover between the worlds of dance, music videos and television, Louie was first discovered as on screen talent for, fittingly, a dancing talent show called Bump N Grind. His judging skills were often overshadowed by his own outrageous outbursts, both verbal and physical. His put downs, ‘with all your clapping, I didn’t know whether I should throw you a fish’, and his trademark exuberant back flips, were tailor made for TV. By 2008, he was cracking American TV as a reality show judge with series such as NBC’s prime time, Celebrity Circus.
But the diminutive five foot seven dancer still wasn’t famous this side of the pond. All that was to change when in 2009, a TV exec came looking around for ideas for docusoaps. He visited Pineapple, and met Louie. When a good looking man walked past them both, Louie looked at the man and said;

‘Ooh, my s******r is fluttering like feeding time in a koi carp pond!’ The exec knew Louie would make TV gold.

In March 2010, Sky 1 broadcast Pineapple Dance Studios. The inspired casting mixed the gravitas of Michael Buerk (famous for his serious BBC news reports) who did the voiceover, with the zany, non-stop energy of on screen characters like Louie. Louie’s constant graphic innuendo, in your face gayness, and relentless dancing energy made him water cooler TV.

After 30 years of sweating and slogging away in studios and on stages, and of striking poses in virtually any situation, Louie had arrived.

Fittingly, that year, he gave an alternative Queen’s speech on Sky 1.
Realising Louie was the main attraction, Sky re-commissioned a second series but this time it was called, Louie Spence’s Showbusiness (a title, he points out, he can’t pronounce).
Premiering on 5 January 2011 it followed his (successful) attempts to put on a huge West End review show. Helped by a supporting cast of certifiably misguided hopefuls, it was again jaw dropping telly.

But a rare example of Louie rubbing the public up the wrong way occurred that month as he was promoting himself and his new series. ITV’s This Morning featured a segment where Louie waxed the bottoms of five men. The content (way, way before the watershed) and unintentional camera angles, lead to hundreds of complaints by viewers and allegedly, even crisis talks within ITV. As the furore took the heat off Eastenders which was in hot water at the time for a controversial storyline, Louie suggested the BBC might like to repay him by writing a part for him as a Cockney hard man. (At the time of writing, Eastenders still has not featured Louie in this role.)

But generally, Louie handled fame like a pro and was helped and supported through it by his Spanish partner, whom he’d married in 2007, and his friend, Emma Bunton. She’d often taken him along as her ‘plus one’ to various media events, from TV shows, to film premieres and award ceremonies, and this gave him the opportunity to observe how the industry worked behind the scenes. Louie was, therefore, more than ready when it came time for him to take centre stage.

Louie had also been given a column in Heat magazine and this gave him the idea for writing his autobiography. Louie released Still Got It, Never Lost It! in September 2011. It may not have added to the great English literary canon, but it received many rave reviews from readers.

He ended the year with the news that he would be replacing Jason Gardiner on ITV1’s skating show Dancing On Ice. Sadly for Louie, he wouldn’t be joining his old friend Emma Bunton on the judging panel as she would also be replaced by Katarina Witt.