Are ex-lovers Vincent and Flavia keeping their relationship Strictly business on tour?
By Lisa Sewards
Last updated at 3:00 PM on 23rd April 2011
To dance the tango well,’ declares Vincent Simone with a flash of his dark eyes, ‘you need to have loved and suffered.’ His partner Flavia Cacace gives a sultry smile in agreement. ‘It’s all about passion, pain, jealousy — and betrayal,’ she adds.
And they should know. For the couple — who have wowed viewers with their sizzling-hot Argentine tango routines through five series of Strictly Come Dancing — have found their personal lives turned upside down by their tangled emotions.
They began on Strictly as a couple who had lived and danced together for 11 years, becoming world tango champions.
Passion: Flavia Cacace and Vincent Simone wowed viewers with their sizzling-hot Argentine tango routines through five series of Strictly Come Dancing
The distraught Vincent — who calls himself the Italian Stallion — found someone else, and he and his new girlfriend Susan Duddy have a baby son. However, there was a bit of a blip when it was revealed that Vincent had been having an affair with fellow Strictly professional dancer Kristina Rihanoff.
Meanwhile, he and Flavia continued to dance together professionally.
Now Flavia and Matt are no longer an item, but she and actor Jimi Mistry — with whom she was paired in Strictly’s 2010 series — are romantically involved, in spite of her resolve not to fall in love with another partner on the show.
Earlier this month Flavia and Vincent began a UK tango tour together, which every night puts them in each other’s arms, entwines their legs and throws them into passionate on-stage kisses.
Their on-stage chemistry sizzles, and, as word spreads, some theatres are reporting that Midnight Tango — which matches them with ten of the world’s finest dancers — is their fastest selling show of 2011.
So how does it work between them? Is it possible to divorce yourself from the steamy clinches, ignore your passionate history and remain detached while performing the world’s sexiest dance?
Partners: Flavia gets close and personal with new beau Jimi Mistry after breaking up with old flame Matt di Angelo, right
‘But I had tunnel vision. You would have had to hit me over the head with a hammer before I’d have seen anything was wrong with our relationship.’
Vincent, also 33, admits he had been jealous of who she might be partnered with when they signed up to Strictly in 2006. That first year, though, Flavia was paired with Jimmy Tarbuck, whom the Italian Stallion decided was no threat.
The following year, his great fear was the darkly brooding Welsh TV presenter Gethin Jones, so Vincent was relieved when she was paired with 20-year-old Matt di Angelo. ‘This one is a baby,’ Vincent reflected at the time. ‘He’s not Flavia’s type.’
But he was wrong. Flavia says: ‘Meeting Matt opened my eyes. For the 11 years Vincent and I had been together, we’d never even been to the cinema or out to dinner, because we were always rehearsing.
‘So when Matt took me out, I thought: “Wow, this is a proper boyfriend.”
‘It was a complete shock to feel that way about Matt. Vincent and I had been competition dancers since our teens and things had gone on from there.
Kicking off: Flavia and Matt became closer and then romantically involved during shows for the BBC series
Vincent agrees. ‘It was an emotional time. We had spent so many intense years together, you can imagine how hard it was for us. Although our romance was on and off, I could never imagine us being apart. But I wasn’t angry with Matt; it was just sad for me and Flavia.
‘But it was always destined to end because we spent all day and night with each other dancing. Then we became lazy without realising it, and instead of practising, we’d say: “Let’s not bother.” ’
They knew that as a successful dance duo with a huge following, thanks to their smouldering performances on Strictly, it would be madness to simply waltz into the sunset separately. After all, they’d been an instant success from the moment they met when they were teenagers.
Flavia’s family moved from Naples and settled in Guildford when she was four years old. A year later she began lessons at the leading local Hurleys Dance School for ballroom and Latin. It was here she met Vincent, who was flitting between the UK and southern Italy.
‘The first time I saw Flavia I knew it was a match made in heaven,’ he recalls. ‘As dance partners, you have to become one. We are both Italian, share the same birth sign — Pisces — are both dark-haired and olive-skinned and our heights work together.
Couple: Flavia is now in a relationship with actor Jimi Mistry, with whom she was paired in the 2010 series of Strictly
Flavia agrees: ‘We’re like brother and sister. If I hear a song I like, I know Vincent will like it, too.
‘He came from a competitive background and I came from a more technical one, having done dance exams.
‘But we have rarely argued in all these years. At rehearsals, everywhere we looked there were professional couples screaming at each other and storming off. We used to giggle at our friends and say: “Oh, here they go again.”
‘We learnt that if we argued it meant we stopped practising, and that got us nowhere. Vincent and I became good friends first, and that’s always been the basis of our relationship.’
This has made their continuing friendship easier for Vincent’s girlfriend, Susan, 37, to cope with.
He met the private jet air stewardess in the Strictly after-show bar six months after his relationship with Flavia ended.
They fell in love instantly, but her trust in him was shaken after his fling with Rihanoff while Susan was pregnant with their son Luca, now 18 months old.
‘Whatever happened is in the past,’ he insists. ‘It seems so long ago because I was in a different state of mind then.
‘We’ve become a little family and I’m in love with two people now, not just one — Susan and Luca, my little Italian sausage. Being a father has changed me.’
Does Susan still get jealous of all the female attention? This is the man who, after all, went mouth-to-mouth with Felicity Kendal in Strictly last year for an erotic samba sensation.
‘Of course, Susan’s a woman,’ says Vincent with a flourish. ‘It’s only natural and I’d be the same. When you’re on television you get loads of attention from girls who don’t care who you are with when they approach you.
‘But I think she’s now got to the point where she understands what I do and knows there is a lot of acting in it.
‘I reassure Susan to make sure she’s part of it. She and Luca are touring with me as much as possible, and when she’s not there, we’re always on the phone. I make sure she’s part of my world.
'Our romance is well and truly over'
Which brings us to Flavia’s romance with 37-year-old Jimi Mistry, who had been single since his marriage to Meg Leonard ended nearly four years ago.
He and Meg, who wed in 2001, have a nine-year-old daughter, Elin. But Mistry said before the last Strictly series began that he hoped the show would revive his love life. ‘If I can keep shaking those hips, who knows what will happen?’ he laughed.
Flavia and Jimi’s relationship is the latest in a string of romantic entanglements to have developed on the Strictly dancefloor. At the start of the 2009 series, boxer Joe Calzaghe broke up with his long‑term girlfriend Jo-Emma Larvin to pursue a romance with Rihanoff, his blonde Russian dance partner.
In 2004, ballroom professional Camilla Dallerup ended her relationship with fellow Strictly dancer Brendan Cole amid rumours he was having an affair with his partner, newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky. Actress Ali Bastian also found passion on and off the dance floor with Strictly professional Brian Fortuna.
Flavia is only too well aware of the irony. ‘I didn’t want to meet anyone else on Strictly. I thought: “That’s enough.” Matt and I had ended our relationship just before Strictly 2010 started. It was mutual — he wanted to go to America for his career and I don’t have the right personality for a long-distance relationship to work.’
Matt and Flavia’s sizzling routines helped the couple get to the final, where they were pipped into second place by Alesha Dixon, now a judge on the show.
‘It was great to make the final, but the time came when it was right to end it,’ explains Flavia. ‘For me, it wasn’t about wanting to meet other people, but about not wanting to feel distant from him. The distance was a risk I wasn’t willing to take, because I didn’t think it was going to work.
‘At that point, I thought I was through with men and was ready to focus on my career. Starting a relationship with Jimi was the last thing I wanted. I kept resisting him, but we were talking for hours and hours — although, we managed to get through Strictly before we started a relationship. We’re very happy.’
Do they think dancing creates a world of dangerous liaisons, with couples spending their time chest-to-chest with a member of the opposite sex?
‘They’re aren’t many professions like ours, but as a professional, physical closeness isn’t an issue,’ says Flavia. ‘We’re focusing on technique and musicality not sex. It’s the same for most actors.’
Jimi will be there whenever he can to watch Flavia and Vincent tango their way around the UK. Flavia says he accepts their dance partnership for what it is — strictly business — and Vincent adds his own words of reassurance.
‘The boundaries are clear. Flavia and I turn up, do what we do and put all our emotions into the dance. As a result, our dancing is fresh and has a new edge and energy to it.
‘And that’s all there is to it.’
Midnight Tango is now touring. For details, visit midnighttango.co.uk.