Charlie Learns to Jive With Ex-Strictly Come Dancing Winner Joanne Clifton

Who doesn’t love Strictly Come Dancing?  We certainly do here at WhichBingo. So much so that we wanted to find out just what the celebrities put themselves through week in and week out for the duration of their stay on the show.

To that end, we sent our resident showman (well, social media manager) Charlie Shakespeare to spend an afternoon with the lovely Joanne Clifton to see if she could teach him to dance to an acceptable standard in a short space of time.

Joanne has excellent dance credentials (and, it turns out, an infinite amount of patience). She has been dancing competitively since the age of four. She was World Ballroom Showdance champion in 2014, appeared in Strictly Come Dancing from 2014 to 2016 and has toured the country in various stage shows including Thoroughly Modern Millie and The Rocky Horror Show. Joanne has been a British dance champion five times and Italian champ three times.

On a sunny day in October Joanne finds herself in a dance studio in London with novice dancer Charlie Shakespeare, whose only claim to dancing fame is being taught to waltz by his nan when we was 14.

Not knowing what she was letting herself in for, Joanne put Charlie through his paces and I think it is fair to say she was pleasantly surprised.

For his part Charlie was full of praise for Joanne’s teaching techniques, the routine she put together and how lovely she is in general.

Our thanks to Joanne for taking the time to teach Charlie to dance and without further ado why not take a look and see how he got on…

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