Archive for June, 2009:
Dancers take pole position on BGT
The four athletic dancers from Stoke-on-Trent assisted gold-toothed rapper DJ Talent, watched by more than 14 million viewers, in the semi-final of the TV talent show.
Dressed in gold bikinis, the girls performed a range of tricks on the poles, while DJ Talent shouted out, “I say Britain, you say talent”.
Despite being championed by former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, the bling-king DJ did not make the cut for the show’s final on Saturday night.
DJ Talent’s pole dancers – instructor Faye Chatterley, who runs Pole Fit, based in Longton, her students Sasha Kavaleva and Becca Edwards, and fellow instructor Deb Riley, of Pole Queens, also based at Longton – enjoyed their big moment.
Faye, aged 31, of Fenton, said: “Through people I know in the pole industry we were asked to come along to auditions. Then we found out we would be supporting DJ Talent.
Diary: Abi’s naked ambition
GLAMOUR girl Abi Titmus is turning her back on the image that found her fame – in a quest to be taken seriously as an actress.
The former nurse was regularly featured in lads’ mags in saucy poses and she became known as a girl who, ahem, certainly dressed down for the cameras.
Yet the newly clean-cut Abi says those days are far behind her.
However, her new theatre role is a little risqué – she plays a pole dancing teacher in comedy The Naked Truth.
But Abi is quick to add there’s no actual nudity in the play, heading to Manchester’s Opera House next week, co-starring Bury’s Lisa Riley and actress Emily Aston.
She tells me she’s spent months rehearsing: “I asked the director how good I needed to be at pole-dancing for this part, and he just looked at me and said: `extraordinary’.
“I’m a bit of a perfectionist so I threw myself into it and spent three months practising, before rehearsals for the play even started. It’s like an athletic sport it’s so tricky, but people just think of it with connotations of being in seedy clubs.
“I thought people might jump to conclusions with me pole dancing, so I was very aware that I needed to make it look as beautiful and graceful as possible.
Six pole dancing queens on stage
A POLE dancing class is the setting that brings six very different women together in a play that is coming to Basingstoke and which features an all-star cast.
The Naked Truth is a girl’s night out coming to The Haymarket next week. It stars Trudie Goodwin – better known to many as June Ackland on ITV’s The Bill – who is thrilled to be back on stage.
“I was last on the stage 12 years ago so it was quite scary getting back up there,” she said.
“I did theatre for ten years before I went into television, but you wonder if you can do still do it. I’m really enjoying it.”
Her co-stars include Lisa Riley – Mandy Dingle in Emmerdale – Julie Buckfield, from Hollyoaks, Abi Titmuss and Emily Aston and Lorraine Hodgson, who both have numerous credits on series’ such as The Bill, EastEnders, Holby City and Heartbeat.