Living Out of His Car Before Strictly Fame

Kevin Clifton is a ballroom and Latin dancer from England who became a familiar face on British television as a professional on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing. Long before that, his career in dance was far from secure, and for a time he found it hard to pay for the lessons and living costs that dancing demanded.

He has described that period on his podcast, The Kevin Clifton Show, and in an interview reported by Hello! magazine. He said there were times with no work when he slept in his car and more or less lived out of it. He explained that he sometimes had to weigh up whether to spend money on petrol to reach his grandmother's house, look for a friend's place in London, or simply stay in the car, because that left him enough to pay for dance lessons the next day.

To keep dancing, he took ordinary office jobs, but he said he kept getting fired from them. At the same time he was reaching the point of leaving the competition circuit, feeling he had fallen out of love with ballroom. He credited joining the cast of the stage show Burn the Floor with reviving his dancing career.

Strictly did not come easily either. He auditioned twice and was turned down both times, which he put down to how he looked at the time. After the second rejection he appeared in the show's trailer in a Morphsuit, as an invisible partner, and he said the call to join came two or three days later. He became a full-time professional in 2013, won the Glitterball trophy in 2018 with Stacey Dooley, and was later partnered with Anneka Rice.