I can’t take half of your £50,000 prize, teacher tells dance star
‘You are so proud when they do well’
WHEN super-flexible Ellie Fergusson was crowned first winner of The Greatest Dancer, she had another surprise move in store for her new fans.
The shy but elastic 14-year- old promptly offered to hand over half of her £50,000 prize money to her long-time dance teacher.
After last week’s shock win on the BBC1 talent show, she announced: ‘I want to give half of it to my dance teacher and I want to use it to help me get to dance school.’
But now her selfless teacher and choreographer Jenni Inglis has politely declined the offer.
She said: ‘She did offer me half, which is just typical of Ellie, but there’s no way. She won that money herself, and I’ve told her I won’t take a penny. She’ll use it to put herself through dance school.’ She says it is reward enough to see her protegee having done so well, adding: ‘It’s something you never imagine. I mean, I go to dance contests all over, and you are so proud when they do well.
‘But prime-time TV, and an audience like that? You just don’t even think that it’s possible.’
Miss Inglis, who first took Ellie on six years ago at The Edinburgh Dance Academy, was there every step of the way, not only travelling to London with her every week, but choreographing every move of those spectacular routines.
At times, they even had her mentor, Strictly’s Oti Mabuse, in tears.
For six weeks, though, Miss Inglis had to put her own life on hold as Ellie wowed the judges, then the studio
From Monday’s Daily Mail audience, then finally the viewing audience at home – which hit a peak of 4.5million for the final.
Five months pregnant, and with a five-year-old son, Lucas, at home and a busy dance school to run, this was quite an ask. ‘Ellie didn’t know I was pregnant for the first trip down to London, which was before Christmas,’ she said. ‘I was practically being sick out of the window.’
Meanwhile, modest Ellie, from Livingston, West Lothian, said she had no clue she might win. ‘I just didn’t want to be the first to go out,’ she admitted. ‘But winning wasn’t even in my head. Even when they called my name out I was still thinking “Who? Me?”.’
But she knows she still owes her teacher. ‘I couldn’t have done it without Jenni, no way,’ she said.
Even her mother Aileen conceded that they make a winning pair. ‘We call them the Dream Team,’ she revealed.
Even more viewers will see Ellie in action when she accepts the second part of her prize (‘the most important part, for me’ she revealed): a starring role in Strictly. She will be a special guest on the next series. Miss Inglis will do the choreography for that too, as she did for the routine in which Oti and Ellie took to the stage together.
Dance, Ellie says, has consumed her since she was first hooked aged three. ‘It’s all I have wanted to do. Even when I find a move hard, I don’t think “I can’t do this”, I know that if I just keep trying, I will be able to.’