Although Peggy Spencer’s life revolved around the ballroom, she never thought of herself as a dancer or choreographer; she was a natural teacher who worked for more than 70 years in service of her belief in “dance for all”. For 50 of them, she was the ultimate authority, stately but friendly, for the BBC’s Come Dancing, and the senior judiciary of global ballroom and Latin dance contests.
Spencer, who has died aged 95, never intended to reign supreme at the palais de dance. Born Margaret Ann Hull, daughter of a carpenter, Jim, and a cook, Maggie, of Bromley, Kent, she was considered too tall and gawky a schoolgirl to learn to dance. Her first passion was for socialist politics: as a young woman at secretarial college, she volunteered to type letters for the Labour MP Herbert Morrison and planned to stand for election herself one day. That idea ended with her marriage in 1940 to Jack Spencer, the birth of their children, Helena and Michael, and the second world war.
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