Len Goodman's twinkly-eyed charm and eccentric wit made him a natural TV idol trends now

Former Strictly Come Dancing judge and ballroom star Len Goodman tragically passed away on Saturday at the age of 78. 

His charm and wit made him the favourite of endless adoring fans.

Back in 2008 in a serialisation of his autobiography he revealed to the Mail his humble beginnings of barrow bow to much-loved TV icon...

Fifty-nine and finished.

Bloody great! That's how I was feeling at the beginning of 2004.

Yes, my dance school was doing well, I was travelling all over the world judging competitions and giving lectures, and life was a bed of roses. So I should have been happy — but something was getting on my wick.

Absolutely everyone in the dance world was talking about a new BBC dancing show, which was going to feature celebrities and professional dancers performing together. Every time I went to judge a competition or bumped into an acquaintance, I'd be asked the same question.

'Have you auditioned for this new BBC show?' I quickly became tired of finding new ways to say no. Of course, I pretended that I couldn't really care less. The truth was that it hurt that I hadn't been asked. Clearly, they thought I was past it.

One morning I had a call from a friend who I'm sure was just trying to rub salt into my wounded pride. He said he'd just been to the BBC for an interview and told me all about it.

'So how did you find it when you went?' he asked me. 'You have been, haven't you?' 'Of course I've been,' I lied. 'But I don't think it's my cup of tea. So I told them I wasn't interested.' From then on it became my stock answer.

My partner, Sue, tried to placate me, but the truth is I was gutted. Then, one evening, sitting at home in Kent, the phone rang. It was Izzie Pick, the producer of Strictly Come Dancing.

She asked if I had heard about the show.

'Yes,' I said. What I thought was: 'About bloody time.' 'Would you be available to come and have an interview?' 'Yes,' I said, trying not to sound too available.

'Any chance of tomorrow?' 'YES!' I said, sounding very available indeed.

Off I went. Izzie got me to do a commentary on some couples dancing on a video, and she seemed to like my slightly off-the-wall criticism.

I even started teaching her how to dance, whirling her around the tiny monitor room where we'd gone to watch the clips.

But she gave no indication if she thought I suited the show and afterwards I was really deflated. I felt sure it hadn't gone well.

Two days later Izzie called again. She wanted me on Strictly Come Dancing! I nearly bashed my head on the ceiling.

Here I was, about to enter my 60s, starting out on a whole new adventure and my first job on TV. Not bad for the grandson of an East End barrow boy — and someone who'd never wanted to be a ballroom dancer in the first place.

I WAS born to Louisa and Len Goodman in 1944, right at the end of the war, and brought up in Bethnal Green, in an overcrowded two-up, two-down in a shabby street close to the Tube station. Dad was an electrician, and we lived with my maternal grandparents.

My grandfather Albert Eldridge was a costermonger, which is what street traders dealing in fruit and vegetables used to be called. He was a real-life barrow boy and his stall was on Bethnal Green Road.

Granddad Albert was a real character. He had all sorts of homespun philosophies. One of his favourites was: 'Your money's like your willie — bit rude, I know, but it still makes me laugh.

For Granddad, playing with your money meant pawning his gold watch every Monday morning for a couple of quid, then going down to Spitalfields Market to buy whatever cheap fruit and veg he could find.

He'd load up his barrow, then rope himself into it like a horse and pull it the mile-and-a-half from Spitalfields to Bethnal Green Road. When I was little, he'd take me along and put me on top of the barrow as he pulled it.

On the way, he'd stop at a café called Pellicci's so he could have a cup of tea. It's still there — it's now a listed building — and whenever I'm nearby I pop in for a coffee and to reminisce.

I remember once, Granddad bought a load of celery, which was just turning rotten, or what costermongers called 'melting'. I was given the job of cleaning it.

First I had to put it into cold water to 'stiffen it up', then I'd clean it up by cutting off all the brown smelly leaves and then trim off any other rotten bits so we could sell it.

Our house had a backyard, where there was our toilet in an outhouse. We didn't have loo paper: we had bits of torn-up newspaper that were kept on a spike.

You had a read while you sat doing your business and if you came across an interesting bit that you hadn't finished reading by the time you'd finished, you put it back on the spike but behind loads of other bits so no one else got to use it before you were back in there again.

By the time I was five years old the outhouse also housed a horse for a while. The horse was a sign of Granddad's growing business empire because it dragged the barrow, rather than Granddad doing it.

Soon after getting the horse, Granddad moved up in the world from being a costermonger to a real greengrocer when he got a shop on Bethnal Green Road.

The backyard was integral to the running of his business. The shed was always stacked full of potatoes, carrots and beetroot or whatever other vegetables were in season.

And beside the shed there was one other thing that was vital to the running of the business: the beetroot boiler. My nan was in charge of the boiler, which looked a bit like a cauldron with gas burners underneath it. Every Monday, Granddad bought a sack of beetroot, and it was my nan's chore to cook it in the backyard.

Besides cooking the beetroot in the boiler, Nan also used it for doing the family's washing — and for washing me. As the water was heating up, before she put the beetroot in it, Nan would strip me off and put me in it.

She'd give me a good scrubbing down while I stood in the cauldron — I must have looked a bit like a cannibal's lunch. After all my filth had been washed off, the water was heated some more and then in would go the beetroot for cooking.

By then the water would have a kind of scum floating on the top of it. Customers always commented on how good Granddad's beetroot tasted.

Probably one of the reasons the beetroot water is so embedded in my memory is because of what

Nan used to do while she was washing me — she would sing to me. They were mostly silly little rhymes but they are etched on my mind.

She'd sing one while walking her fingers down my little body, going: Eyes, nose, mouth, chin, Walking down to Uncle Jim.

Uncle Jim sells lemonade.

Another like that went: Breast of mutton, Belly of pork, Vinegar bottle without a cork.

Talking of vinegar, that was another of Granddad's money-making schemes. Somewhere he got hold of a formula for producing it and our homemade 'Eldridge Vinegar' went into full-scale production.

I seem to remember it involved citric acid and molasses amongst other things. The concoction fermented away in the backyard in a great big barrel, at the bottom of which was a tap which constantly dripped.

After a few months there was a great hole in the concrete where the drip landed.

God knows what it was doing to people's stomachs, but like the beetroot it seemed to go down very well with the customers.

Having a shop as well as a barrow meant the family's fortune started to improve, due in no small measure to Granddad's business nous. The shop was kitted out with large metal bins into which all the sacks of fruit and vegetables were emptied for display and sale.

Potatoes used to come in hundredweight sacks and one day I watched my Granddad hump one into the shop on his shoulders. First of all he emptied half of the potatoes from the sack into one bin and the other half into the next-door bin.

He then took a card on which he wrote 'Selected — one penny-halfpenny/lb' and stuck it on one of the bins. On the next-door bin containing potatoes from the same sack he stuck another card saying 'Regular — one penny/lb'.

'But Granddad,' I said, 'they're all from the same sack.' 'Yes, but you watch,' he replied.

'The penny-halfpenny ones will all go before the penny ones do. That's a little lesson you'll learn, Lenny. If you undersell yourself, people sort of don't respect you quite so much.' And he was right; all the more expensive ones went first. It was a great lesson, one I still think about.

In 1950, shortly after my sixth birthday, my parents and I moved across the River Thames to Blackfen, in Kent, although we still spent lots of time back in Bethnal Green.

I'm sure Granddad must have helped with the money because they bought a greengrocer's, where Mum and Dad both worked, and we moved to a small, semi-detached house.

Granddad's business must also have been doing really well, because around the same time he got another greengrocer's shop on Bethnal Green Road, about 200 yards from the first one. Eventually he had three there.

The family was becoming a greengrocer dynasty — not quite Sainsbury's, but still good considering what it all started from.

Life went along relatively smoothly with no great dramas, or so it seemed, but I was becoming increasingly aware that Mum and Dad were arguing more; it got to the point where they were rowing every day.

When you're young, you have no idea about relationships and all

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