Trivia

He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the order of the British Empire) in the 1961 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to ballroom dancing.

He was a popular bandleader and won the Italian Bronze Medal for Valor.

His son, the radio scriptwriter Victor Silvester, Jr. married the model Patti Morgan

His ashes are interred at Golders Green Crematorium in Golders Green, London, England.

Was the second son of a North London vicar.

Played a significant part in the growing popularity of ballroom dance in Britain.

Studied at Trinity College and the London Conservatory of Music.

During his 50-year long career sold over 75 million records.

Made more than 6500 broadcasts for the BBC.

Partnering Phyllis Clarke, he won the 1922 World Dancing Championship and subsequently opened his own chain of dance academies, becoming England's foremost ballroom dance teacher.

Served in the British Army during World War I (aged just fifteen, having lied about his date of birth), including a stint as member of a firing squad executing deserters.

Victor, his wife and son are memorialised at Golders Green Crematorium, London.

His BBC Television show Dancing Club lasted 17 years. He also presented a weekly request programme on the BBC Overseas Service (later World Service) which ran from 1948 to 1975. His obituary in The Times noted, "Turn on a radio in Famagusta, Cape Town or Peking and one would be likely to hear his music issuing from the speakers.

He insisted his recordings conform precisely to the beats per minute recommended by the ISTD for ballroom dances, a concept termed "strict tempo".

He was one of the first post-war English dancers to feature the full natural turn in the slow waltz. This innovation was a factor in his winning the first World Ballroom Dancing Championship in 1922 with Phyllis Clarke as his partner.

By 1958, when he published his autobiography, he was the most successful dance band leader in British musical history, and a major star on British radio and television.

In British eyes he became indelibly associated with the catch-phrase "slow, slow, quick-quick-slow" - a rhythm that occurs in the foxtrot and quickstep.

Silvester's record sales were so huge that competition was inevitable.

He would continue to make music for half a century, mostly covering the popular music standards and show tunes, sometimes (but rarely) swing, trad jazz and in latter years, especially from 1971 when the orchestra continued under his son Victor Silvester Jr, rock and roll, disco and pop. These later attempts to stay "with it" involved the introduction of an electric guitar, but it is mostly the more melodic recordings of the 1940s and 1950s that are now reissued on CD and still sold widely.

The lack of what he felt were adequate records for dancing led Silvester in 1935 to form his own five-piece band, later enlarged and named Victor Silvester and his Ballroom Orchestra, whose first record, "You're Dancing on My Heart" (by Al Bryan and George M. Meyer), sold 17,000 copies and was to become his signature tune.