Family and Early Life
Du Beke was born Anthony Paul Beke in Sevenoaks, Kent to a Hungarian father, Antal Xavier Beke (1939-2001), and a Spanish mother, Ascensión (née Lema). He also has two younger siblings. He attended Wildernesse School in Sevenoaks.
Du Beke began dancing at 11, when he discovered his local dance school, The Holton School of Dancing in Sevenoaks. The school was run by Beryl Holton together with her mother Velda and later with her husband Stephen Turner. He took his first dancing exam in June 1978 and started competitive dancing a few years later. He had three partners during these formative years before the Holton School of Dancing closed in 1987 when Beryl and Stephen Turner moved with his banking career to Dorset. Du Beke left school at 16 to follow an amateur dancing career. At 17 he decided to specialise in ballroom. Whilst he danced during the evenings and at weekends he had a day job as a salesman in "The Bed Post" in Petts Wood, South London.
Read more about this topic: Anton Du Beke
Famous quotes containing the words family, early and/or life:
“Diamonds may have been a girl’s best friend in an era when a woman’s only hope of having a high family income was to marry a man who was well-off, but today, marketable skills that will enable a woman to command a good income over her lifetime are a better investment.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“Early rising is no pleasure; early drinking’s just the measure.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)