Last week, Lady Wilnelia Forsyth received a special invitation from Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. The invitation was to attend an event at the London Palladium, where a tribute was being held for her late husband, Sir Bruce Forsyth. Sir Bruce was being honored with a permanent exhibition showcasing his life at the Hall of Fame.
It was evident how much Sir Bruce cherished the London Palladium, often referring to it as his ‘spiritual home’. Following his passing in 2017, his ashes were interred beneath the stage. A plaque was placed there with a touching inscription that hailed Sir Bruce as the UK’s greatest entertainer. The plaque also mentioned that he now rests in a place where the sounds of music, laughter, and dancing surround him – a fitting final spot for someone who dedicated his life to entertainment.
‘He did his first show there in 1958 and, incredibly, his last show there in 2015,’ says Wilnelia.
Lady Wilnelia Forsyth shared her emotional experience at the event, mentioning that the whole family was present. The family gathering included Bruce’s five daughters from previous marriages, their son Jonathan Joseph (referred to as JJ), and their beloved housekeeper, Cora. Lady Wilnelia was taken to a special area where she saw a picture of Sir Bruce, preserving his memory and legacy.
She shows me an astonishingly vibrant painting of the brilliant entertainer on her mobile phone.
‘When I opened the door and saw it, it was like he was suddenly there. That really hit me. Immediately, my eyes were watering. I didn’t expect that, but this is what happens with grief. You think you’re okay – you are okay – then suddenly…’ Her eyes well up now as she talks about it. ‘It comes and goes like a wave.’
Last night Wilnelia and the rest of the nation saw Bruce again as the phenomenally successful BBC dance show Strictly Come Dancing celebrated 20 Fabulous Years with an anniversary special featuring the unforgettable moments that were woven into the fabric of our weekends for the past two decades.
Sir Bruce, who presented Strictly from the first show in 2004 to 2014, was the warp and weft of that weave for so many of us.
‘The show was him,’ says Wilnelia, 66. ‘He moved it around his personality.’ Which, of course, he did with his gentle wit, enthusiasm and timeless catchphrase to us all to ‘Keeeep Dancing.’
When Sir Bruce died at the age of 89, seven years ago, Wilnelia sobbed non-stop. She was 22-years-old when they met in 1980 and he is the only man she has ever loved.
A former Miss World from Puerto Rico, she barely gave a thought to the 29 years that separated them once he took her in his arms to dance at a beauty pageant they were judging. He was, she tells me, ‘the perfect partner. A friend, a lover, someone I could trust, respect and admire.
‘He brought warmth and light into every corner of my existence, painting my days with joy and my nights with comfort.’
Wilnelia couldn’t imagine a life without him.
‘Two weeks before he died he was not well. I had a business appointment in London but decided not to go because, for the first time, he couldn’t really get up from the bed.
‘I said to him, ‘what am I going to do without you? I don’t even know how to use this television remote control.’ I’d bought him a huge, new television so he could watch his sport.
‘He said ‘Really? The control?’ He was showing me how to use it and I said, ‘how am I going to live without you? How am I going to make decisions?’
‘He said ‘don’t worry I’ll be here. Every time you see a rainbow you’ll think of me and you’ll know what to do.’
A few hours after Bruce eventually passed away with his five daughters, son and wife in his home overlooking Wentworth Golf Club, a beautiful rainbow filled the sky. She has a photograph of it on her phone now.
‘In Puerto Rico we have a lovely villa that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. Every time we were there – because it rains and then there’s glorious sunshine – there was a rainbow. I wonder if that’s why he said that.
‘On the day he passed away it was a beautiful day. At lunchtime, there was this thunderstorm. We all looked at each other because we thought, ‘the sky has opened for Bruce’.
‘At about 4pm we were downstairs and, suddenly, there was this huge rainbow. I don’t know, you want to believe. When you are grieving you just grab anything that is there to make you feel good but, for me, it was a kind of sign that he was alright.’
Death didn’t scare Sir Bruce, as he told me in his final, poignant interview to mark his autobiography Strictly Bruce: Stories of My Life in 2015.
Instead, he counted his blessings for his ‘fortunate life’ and a career that included the legendary ITV variety show Sunday Night At The London Palladium which he hosted for six years from 1958, The Generation Game (which regularly attracted more than 21 million viewers in the 70s) and, of course, Strictly.
‘I remember when he came home after the first show there was that news lady, Natasha Kaplinsky [the BBC presenter who won the first series with her professional partner Brendan Cole]. He said that before she came down the stairs [to dance] she said, ‘Bruce, you have to get me out of this show.’
‘He said ‘I’m only the presenter. I’m not a judge. How can I do that?’ He told me it was lovely to see her grow into the dance. Over the series those people become a family.
‘But he had thought, from the beginning, that it was going to be a kind of funny show, like a Generation Game but where people come to learn to dance. He never expected the professional side to the dancing and how seriously they’d all take a routine or a rehearsal.
‘Bruce was a musician, a dancer, an actor, a singer and an entertainer so the show was perfect for him.
The wonderful, late judge Len Goodman, and present judge Anton Du Beke who was, in Bruce’s days, a professional dancer, would pop into his dressing room to say hello.
Wilnelia says he would have been delighted with Anton’s promotion to the judging panel, but he wasn’t always in agreement with decisions made on Strictly. ‘One of the things that upset him was everything that happened with Arlene.’
She means the peerless choreographer and former Strictly judge Arlene Phillips who was controversially dropped from the judging panel in 2009 in favour of Alesha Dixon, a former contestant 35 years her junior.
‘He was very fond of Alesha but couldn’t understand why they couldn’t keep Arlene too and have five judges.’
Strictly, of course, is much changed from the days Sir Bruce quipped, ‘You’re my favourite’ and Anton du Beke hauled Ann Widdecombe around the dance floor to the joy of viewers throughout the country.
‘Bruce always loved engaging with an audience. He told me he liked to see the whites of their eyes, but, on Strictly, he mostly spoke into a camera, so he’d often do the warm-up before a show. He’d play the piano, entertain them, just be there with the audience – that was what was so important to him.
‘Even when he was ill, Bruce never lost his sense of humour. We’d laugh about so many things, watch movies, talk about the family – the children. We’d celebrate our lives – drink champagne and Jack Daniels. Bruce was a romantic.’
I wonder what he’d make of today’s slicker, more Americanised Strictly with contestants – often reality TV stars or influencers – whose backgrounds are in dance rather than the entertaining Ann Widdicombes of this world who learnt from scratch.
‘Bruce never thought reality stars would last.’ Wilnelia laughs. ‘He believed in talent, professionalism and learning your craft but he’d have loved the standard of the dancing.’
When Bruce first died, Wilnelia couldn’t bring herself to watch Strictly for several years. It was, she says, ‘too upsetting.’ Exactly how upsetting is writ large on her face.
Anyone who knew Bruce and Wilnelia will tell you this was a rare, ‘one in a million’ marriage. ‘We balanced each other,’ says Wilnelia.
Bruce always knew the likelihood was he would be the first to die.
‘He mentioned it to me from the beginning,’ she says. ‘Because there was such a big age gap we talked to each other about it. So, I know, if someone special came along Bruce would want me to be happy, but I don’t know if I need someone in that way. I have amazing friends – couples and singles.
‘Sometimes I feel I need a hug, but…’ She shrugs. ‘If someone comes along who knows. My friends do this dating.’ She points to her phone meaning internet dating. ‘But that’s not for me. JJ is also around so I get a hug from him.’
Her 38-year-old son has been her rock since Bruce’s death. He encouraged her to leave the house she shared with Bruce to move to a new home shortly before Covid where she is now forging a different life.
She throws herself with enthusiasm into her luxury candle business and charity works, as well as the Mister World and Miss Puerto Rico franchises which remain huge in her native country. She has also started playing golf again and has a handicap of 24.
‘I was so lucky to have 37 years with him and 34 years of the most amazing marriage. A lot of my friends married, divorced and married again in that time. For me, for Bruce and for JJ it was wonderful that we were together and lived in the same house all that time.’
Her new home is a stone’s throw from where she spent her married life and JJ was born. It is a beautiful, warm place filled with gold frosted Christmas decorations. She knew when she first walked into the marble floored hallway this was ‘my place’.
‘There was a rainbow outside too when we moved in which was really something,’ she says. Her dearly loved mother and father were both suffering with Alzheimer’s so those first years here were a bittersweet time.
‘When Bruce died the upstairs in our home was a kind of recuperation floor for him,’ she says. ‘I had a choice to renovate the house or move. At that time, I was dealing with my mother and was going backwards and forwards to Puerto Rico as well. Then my son showed me a photo of this house.
‘We spent most of Covid here with my mother and JJ until she passed away two years ago. My father died three months before her.’
Family is everything to this big-hearted woman. During Bruce’s lifetime, she embraced each of his five daughters and brought them together with their son JJ as a family. They remain hugely close and, when Bruce was ill, came daily to sit with him.
‘It was very strange losing Bruce and then my mother. With Bruce, I couldn’t stop crying. With my mother I was praying to God to take her because it was so hard seeing her like that.’
Wilnelia, a hugely charitable woman with a foundation in Puerto Rico, has now established an organisation in memory of her mother called Delia’s Respite for Caregivers.
‘You help the patient through helping the caregivers,’ says Wilnelia. There will be a charity golf tournament in Puerto Rico in February and a gala at the end of the year when she is also celebrating 50 years since she won Miss World.
‘Bruce used to say the older you get the faster time flies,’ she says. ‘I do believe that, somehow, death is not the end. You learn to live with it, but I miss him particularly at this time of year, – the whole family do. I miss his company. I miss having fun with him, watching movies, talking to him, making decisions. He was very special in my life – but life goes on.
‘I don’t know if I’ll meet somebody else but if I do I know my love for Bruce will always be there.’ Along with the rainbows? ‘Yes,’ she says.
‘And the dancing. That’s how the whole thing started. We danced and we never went back to the table at that beauty pageant dinner. I know if I never love again, I was incredibly lucky to dance through so many wonderful years of marriage with Bruce.’
