Strictly speaking, this is a man in a midlife crisis
Who says so? The wife who’s seen him take up the piano, marathons, Bake Off AND Gangnam
ED BALLS’S decision to risk ridicule on Strictly Come Dancing was part of a ‘really, really long mid-life crisis’ that has left his family joking he will buy a motorbike next, his wife has revealed.
Yvette Cooper told The Mail on Sunday that the BBC’s hit dance show had exposed the public to the hidden ‘wacky’ side of her husband, whose endearing mix of enthusiasm and awkwardness has made him its unexpected star.
And she admitted the former Shadow Chancellor’s mid-life crisis began a few years ago when he decided to take up the piano.
The mother-of-three and Labour MP said: ‘I confess I wasn’t keen on the early morning practising, especially the loud scales and arpeggios just as I was rushing round in circles trying to find missing PE kits or get the kids out to school.
‘Then he took up marathon running. Three times. Then we had The Great Sport Relief Bake Off with his ski-slope cake. And then fake tans and Samba dancing.
‘It’s become a family joke about what Ed will come up with next and whether he will end up buying something crazy like a motorbike.’
Ms Cooper said Strictly had unveiled a side of her husband that had been largely obscured during his political career.
‘Ed never does anything by halves, so of course that means serious debate and arguments in politics just as it means fun in Strictly,’ she added. ‘But while Strictly has been a revelation for people who didn’t know him well, the clues were probably there all along. Even as an MP he did some wacky photo ops – on a swing with Andy Burnham, playing dinosaurs with Rachel Reeves, or dragging Ed Miliband into Greggs to bulk buy sausage rolls.’
Balls – who delighted TV audiences, if not the judges, with his routines including a wonderfully eccentric Gangnam Style, before being voted off last Sunday – would not give up developing his ballroom moves, his wife predicted.
‘Ed’s just going to have to keep dancing – as Tess and Claudia would say,’ she added. ‘Rehearsing and training up to eight hours a day has certainly taken the pounds off, so it’s a very good reason to do the tour in the New Year.
‘I wish I could say I had been inspired to get fit at the same time. Instead I’ve just been enjoying sitting down in the Strictly audience cheering Ed on.’
And she admitted she was keen to improve her own dance moves with her husband’s help: ‘I’ve learnt a few Charleston steps but there’s a lot Ed’s going to have to teach me.
‘Salsa and Samba would be fun, but I don’t fancy taking my chances on those lifts in the American Smooth.’ Before Strictly, Balls’s dancing had been limited to Labour conferences, Christmas parties and weddings, including his own.
But although he has won over a new audience following his departure from politics a year ago, Ms Cooper more or less ruled out further forays into reality television.
She said: ‘Much as we enjoy watching The X Factor or The Voice, I just can’t see Ed as a would-be pop star.
‘Thank goodness Dancing on Ice has finished as that would be asking for trouble. I’m A Celebrity... is definitely a step too far – and anyway he’s scared of rats.’
Of 2016, Ms Cooper added: ‘Brexit didn’t surprise me, Gangnam Style delighted me. But Trump really depresses me. It has certainly been a very strange year.’
‘Thank goodness Dancing On Ice has finished’
DO YOU really think anyone in this deeply divided country has a mandate to go hell-for-leather for full immediate exit from the EU, regardless of costs and consequences? I don’t. I think we might be very wise to settle for a Norway-style arrangement, and leave the rest for some other time.
A mandate is a mandate, but only because of the strange, rather illogical magic which says that a majority of one vote decides the issue. So it does. But it doesn’t sweep away any duty to consider the defeated minority, our fellow countrymen and countrywomen, our neighbours, I FORCED myself to watch part of one episode of Strictly Come Dancing and was strangely moved by the performance of Katya Jones. As she capered lightly around the lumpish, slowmoving form of Ed Balls, she resembled a chipmunk trying rather desperately to make friends with a grizzly bear.
But as I watched I also realised that Mr Balls is now a potential Prime Minister. Once, he would have ruined his hopes of high office by taking part in such a thing. But in modern Britain, almost any kind of TV fame is an advantage.
Look at Al ‘Boris’ Johnson, once a reasonably successful journalist and entertaining public speaker, now a wild superstar of politics. It was his repeated appearances on Have I Got News For You which made him Foreign Secretary and may yet make him Premier.
They lifted him into that class of people who no longer need to friends, colleagues, even relatives. It may be that if the other side had won, they might have behaved badly towards us. I have been in enough minorities in my time to have experienced that. But they would have been wrong to do so. And precisely because our cause is so good, we can afford to be generous in victory.
I get tired of the overblown shouting on both sides here. Anyone, even I, could see that a referendum was only the first step, and that lawyers, judges, civil servants, diplomats and the BBC would seek to frustrate a vote to leave. That’s why I always wanted to take another, longer route out. I wasn’t surprised by the High Court decision that Parliament explain who they are, a priceless status in politics. I know a bit about this because of my sole appearance on the same programme.
The editing wasn’t especially kind to me (they cut out one of my jokes) and the whole thing was dominated by the insufferable celebrity cook Clarissa Dickson Wright, who swelled up like a human Zeppelin whenever a camera came near her. But even so, for a few days afterwards I experienced a tiny taste of true celebrity, being recognised as that man off the telly by an astonishing range of people. And that was after just one appearance.
Mr Balls is now permanently famous, and widely liked for having been ready to make a fool of himself for the pleasure of others. Even his silly name has become a sort of asset. He has the wit to take full advantage of this. But is it proper or right that TV executives can make a political career? I don’t think so. must consulted, and I will be even less shocked if the so-called ‘Supreme Court’ takes the same view. The facts are on their side. MPs were told, in the official briefing by the Commons Library, that the referendum they were voting for would be advisory, not binding.
So please hesitate before condemning David Davis when he warns that we are not likely to get a clean break from the EU in the coming talks. Mr Davis understands the monster better than most, and would, I think, prefer to get us out completely. But if even he has begun to talk about a halfway deal, then that means it is the best we can realistically get. Apart from anything else, he knows very well that the Tory Party is not to be trusted in the months ahead.
He is really the only serious conservative figure in the Government. Unlike some who saw the Leave campaign as a vehicle for ambition a few months ago, he grasped the problem long before.
IT IS painful to recall how he was robbed of the Tory leadership by an alliance of media creeps and big money. They destroyed Mr Davis and saddled us for years with that empty vessel, David Cameron. People are already beginning to forget Mr Cameron. They shouldn’t. First, because so many who should have known better – Tory activists and then voters – fell for his marketing. Second, because he is mainly responsible for the mess in which we now find ourselves. Try not to be fooled by this kind of person again.
And in the meantime, realise that, in these difficult times, we risk the sort of unforgiving, dangerous and destabilising divisions which are even now ripping through the USA. In such conditions, you may well get what you want, but only at a hard and bitter cost. Is that worth it?
Halfway out of the EU, which we can achieve now, may turn out to be a whole lot better than being halfway in.