Episode 147: Arlene Phillips
Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Kat Rulach
4.8 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2025
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Arlene Phillips is a choregrapher who has been at the top of her game for most of her 81 years.
She has worked on the choreography for numerous adverts, musicals, film and videos.
She has two daughters: Alana who she had early in her career when she was just about to go to Hollywood to make a film with the Village People called 'Can't stop the Music', and then she had her second daughter Abi when she was 47, when she actually thought her symptoms meant she was entering the menopause.
We spoke at Arlene's house, and she told me how she lost her mum at the age of 15, and that her career path feels like a series of Alice in Wonderland moments that were magically presented to her.
She also described how back in the 1979, the Hollywood film producer Allan Carr (iconic producer of Grease) greeted the news of her - his choreographer - becoming unexpectedly pregnant, with the offer of a nanny, a PA, a Winnebago on the film set, and a birthing guru called JIm! To say I'm envious is an understatement!
Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Sophia Lusbexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. |
| 0:14.1 | I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. |
| 0:21.6 | Being a mother can be the most amazing thing. |
| 0:24.6 | It can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. |
| 0:27.6 | I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. |
| 0:31.6 | Welcome to spinning plates. |
| 0:35.6 | Greetings. I'm actually speaking to you from a hotel corridor, so I'm keeping my voice down, |
| 0:41.2 | because whenever I'm recording this, I always wonder if people think I'm talking to myself. |
| 0:45.8 | I try and look like I'm having a phone call or organizing a very important business note, |
| 0:50.5 | but I think it just looks like someone talking to their phone. |
| 0:55.5 | Basically, I am in a corridor because inside the hotel room here are three of my children. |
| 1:02.5 | And there's no way you'd be able to hear what I'm saying if I went in there. |
| 1:06.2 | We're just finishing a little half-term trip. |
| 1:09.5 | It's been really nice, actually. |
| 1:12.3 | We've come to Miami, |
| 1:16.3 | which is somewhere I'd never been before my life, and I'd always wanted to see what it's like. |
| 1:23.5 | And I've got, I'm singing here tomorrow night, and it's brought us here, and we've taken the three small ones, left behind my gorgeous 16-year-old who's been revising for his mocks, my 20-year-old |
| 1:31.8 | who's doing his own thing and meeting up very sweetly. They're spending a lot of time together, |
| 1:37.8 | which is really cute back home, but I miss my big boys. But yeah, the three littles have had a |
| 1:41.7 | great time. Lots of splashing about playing in the pool we've |
| 1:46.7 | seen some street art we've been to the everglades and seen alligators we've been to a little havana |
| 1:53.6 | it's a cool place it's a very easy place to be for a holiday and it's been lovely so that's a nice thing |
... |
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