Dame Arlene: Our children need to dance

DAME Arlene Phillips wants dancing to be put back on the school curriculum and prescribed on the NHS as 15 new celebrities took to the dancefloor on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing last night.

- By Julia Kuttner

The former Strictly judge is backing Angela Rippon's campaign to have dance prescribed by GPs.

Dame Arlene, 82, called on politicians to urgently put dance and the arts back into every school, calling it "fitness for the body and fitness for the brain".

"Children thrive with a bit of music, a bit of dance, a bit of drama," she said.