Choreographer Craig Revel Horwood, Strictly Come Dancing’s Mr Nasty, is actually Mr Nice Guy. We met on Friday over coffee at The Watermill, where he’s encamped for the next few months, directing back-to-back productions of Spend Spend Spend! and the return of Hot Mikado which was a sell-out success here in 2006.
“It’s a real summer gig and I love being back – out of the rat race of London – no reception on my mobile or internet access, no distractions, no Strictly interviews, we can achieve a high level of concentration and...” he raises an eyebrow, “I can be at one with the actors.”
He was putting the cast through their paces for Spend Spend Spend! – the true story of Viv Nicholson, an extrovert working-class lass from Yorkshire who won a fortune on the football pools and blew it all living the highlife – the Olivier-nominated musical that he originally choreographed in the West End.
The producers had wanted someone with wit behind their choreography and he was ‘scouted out’ for the London production as a result of a little charity striptease he put together for the West End Bears while working in Martin Guerre at the Prince Edward Theatre – a line of naked actors, up against a urinal, putting on the most unlikely women’s clothing, including suspenders, in a reverse striptease that eventually revealed them as a bunch of builders.
“It was very funny. After that they said there was only one person to choreograph Spend Spend Spend! and they had to have me.”
Craig wasn’t born until four years after the most famous pools winner in history hit the headlines in 1961.
“But I have photos that resemble that era. Life didn’t change much – the 1950s was ballroom, people dancing together, and things only changed with the twist in ’61, then miniskirts, but the next big explosion in culture didn’t happen until 1979.
“Spend Spend Spend! is a gritty story, very much a Northern story, and it’s my job to tell it honestly. Viv won £152,319 – the equivalent of £5m today.”
Bruce Forsythe handed the miner’s daughter the cheque that would change her life, and she announced to the press that she would spend, spend, spend.
“She was one of those people who, when they got money, threw it about. She loved fast cars, her pink Cadillac, houses, luxury holidays, drinking and parties; she was incredibly generous, but found it hard to cope with the psychological effect that the money brought. It broke up her five marriages.
“You have to feel sorry for her. She was just searching for happiness.”
“When I first interviewed Viv, I built my characterisation for the dance routines round her physicality and the way she told her stories.”
Viv Nicholson, who is now aged 73, has been invited to the opening night at The Watermill. She made a splash in the press on the opening night in London.
“It was mad. She ran on stage, lifted her skirt and flashed at the audience.”
In true West End tradition the aftershow party had to be big and brash.
“There were pink Cadillacs lined up outside to whisk the cast and Viv off for drinks.
So how did Craig manage to shrink this huge hit down from the Picadilly Theatre to the 10 ft-square Watermill stage?
“No problem. It was already small, but West End producers demand you make things bigger, bigger, bigger; add 50 dancers to the kick line, lush orchestration, it has to explode on stage. Look at Sunset Boulevard (which transferred  to the West End from The Watermill), that’s really an intimate four-hander. They just don’t get it. It’s not bigger, better.
“I think it’s the same with Spend Spend Spend! It lends itself to The Watermill’s actor musicianship. We’ve pared it back to a single human story which musical director Sarah Travis has orchestrated beautifully.
“And we’ve built fun into it –- we’ve got Bunny Girls in the kick line and a Bruce Forsyth impersonation. I think that’s what people like at The Watermill.”
Craig’s summer in the country has also given him the space to complete a new chapter to add to his autobiography All Balls and Glitter, which comes out in paperback in the autumn to coincide with the new Strictly series.
The Aussie lad from the old gold mining town of Ballerat has come far and has worked his way up the hard way. Billy Elliot may have delivered a blow to northern working class mores but that’s peanuts compared a boy’s passion for ballet in 1970s macho Melbourne.
“Saturday Night Fever had just come out, and disco dance was just about OK, but classical ballet, which I was doing, was not acceptable, nor jazz nor contemporary dance.
His mother drove him to classes, then became increasingly involved herself, making costumes for shows. “She was great at the interlocking machine. It gave her something to do that was about herself. It was good for both of us.”
His father, a navy man who was often away, was an abusive alcoholic, but his mother never left him.
“There were five kids,” he explains.
“Dance changed me, it gave me confidence. I could stick two fingers up at the world and, one night in bed, I thought I have to make a decision about this; I could use those two fingers or I could conform.”
He chose his passion and did all he could to pay for his dance studies. The drag act and rent boy years were well documented in the press following his autobiography. Through jobs in television and theatre, he eventually danced his way to Europe.
“Cabaret was something I thought I should do before I died, and I found myself at the fabulous Paris Lido, dancing in a G-string and boots, wih a big blue fish on my head.”
Hold that thought.
In this country Craig’s credits are as long as your arm, including associate director/choreographer on West Side Story, resident director on Miss Saigon and assisting Bob Avian on the Olivier Award-winning choreography of Martin Guerre. Recent work includes Calamity Jane for which he received a nomination for Best Musical, Manchester Evening News Awards; directing and choreographing a new version of Barry Manilow’s Copacabana and choreography for Tommy Cooper– Jus like that!
However, Craig has become well known to the general public as a judge on the hugely successful BBC TV series Strictly Come Dancing, having completed three series, and written a book, Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing, published by Hodder Headline.
He showed his vulnerability, shaking uncontrollably on Celebrity Masterchef. – “I’m not a nervous person, but I dreaded waking up in the mornings, not knowing what was ahead, and making an absolute fool of myself on national television,” he says.
He was at The Watermill when it was broadcast, and on his walks down to the Blackbird pub, complete strangers would wind down their car windows and shout: “Loving you on Masterchef!”
Mr Nasty? No.
“People see you on a little box delivering a 10-second critique and think they know you; I have to be honest, I can’t lie.”
In Brucie’s words, he’s my favourite.