Natalie Cassidy – Then & Now Workout

Natalie Cassidy is the 5^th Eastenders actress workout to be featured on C-List Celebrity Workouts. She follows in the illustrious footsteps of Barbara Windsor, Jessie Wallace, Hannah Waterman and Charlie Brooks. It is a time honoured traditions for residents of Albert Square to don their lycra and share 60 minutes of themselves leaping about a bit with the world.

 If you consult your Cut-Out-and-Keep* Workout-Releasing Eastenders Actors Knowledge Sheet you can see that we haven’t even hit the halfway mark yet.

*Don’t really try to cut this out of your computer screen. That wouldn’t end well.

There’s some serious work ahead of us and six more workouts to get through before we can call “house!” on our Eastenders  bingo card. That’s assuming more Eastenders actors don’t release workout DVDs in the meantime. I suspect I would be powerless to stop them.

Not that I’d want to of, course.  I vote June Brown does one next. Or AdamWoodyatt.

You know, that dream could be closer than we realise.

Natalie teamed up with Charlie Brooks’ fitness instructor, Dee Thresher for this workout which was released in 2007, a couple of years after Charlie’s “Before and After” workout.

Dee is clearly not one to mess with a tried and tested formula. The workout is almost completely identical to the previous one. Including the footage of Natalie’s first workout and lots of close up foot action as she steps on the scales. All Dee’s signature moves are here: the box-step, the side-to-side skippy thing , lots of pelvis action. The whole thing’s too dance-y for my liking. She acts like it’s going to be all no-nonsense aerobic stuffs and then drops a choreographed dance sequence on you.

The sections are named things like SWEAT! and PUNCH! I was looking forward to the PUNCH section as I love a bit of pretend violence, me. Rather than getting stuck into imaginary fist fights, Dee has us skipping about like cheerleaders.

 

Street-fighting. Dee Thresher style.

Natalie and Dee seem to get on pretty well. Although, at one point Dee remarks to Natalie, “Let’s see if we can wipe that smile off your face.”

“You’ll have a job” responds Nat who then makes it her personal mission to SMILE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE for the rest of the workout. She looks completely deranged. It was lovely to watch.

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!



Natalie delivers the classic celebrity workout line : “If I can do it – anyone can!” I wish I had been  keeping count of which celebrities have come out with those exact words. I reckon it’s all of them apart from Mark Wahlberg so far.

Best Bit

The exercise studio is  somewhere in London overlooking the Shell Mex building and the London Eye. It’s quite exciting. It’s the first C-List Celebrity Workout that looks like it might actually be taking place in the real world.

Tops of buildings! Some Flags!

Genuinely the most excited I've been about anything in a workout DVD ever.

It ought to be possible to identify the building that this is being filmed in based on the view from the window. I will try and work it out and then incorporate it into a CLCW walking tour. It’ll be great. I need a few more sites of historical C-List Celebrity Workout Importance first. Then I’ll organise a group of us to go round each one and do some appropriate fitness routines at each location.

Worst Bit

Sure you promise extras, Natalie Cassidy’s Then & Now Workout DVD, but what do you actually deliver? An “Eating Plan” which just consists of some words on the screen and barest outline of a healthy eating plan.

OK. Seems reasonable.

Wait, you haven’t said how often I can have these. I’m guessing about five or six times a day, right?

Luckily Natalie did a whole programme on how to eat for the BBC so don’t panic. Apparently living for a week on just maple syrup and water can make you feel a bit giddy.  You might want to make a note of that for future reference.

Weirdest Bit

“So Long, Sonja!” says the back of the DVD box. Who the hell is Sonja and why are we are saying goodbye to her?  I am presuming that they don’t mean Natalie’s Eastenders character, Sonia Fowler because surely whoever was writing the bit of bumph on the back of the box would have put in the cursory amount of research necessary to spell the name properly. Perhaps they’re talking about Queen Sonja of Norway. She might have been going off on a trip somewhere at the time.

Difficulty Level
This was far too complicated for me. I’m not here to memorise a dance routine, Dee. Just show me some squats and tell me to get on with it.

Would I do this workout again?

No. As I said it is almost identical to Charlie Brooks’  Before & After Workout. However, I do have the next Dee Thresher/Eastenders Actor mash-up to look forward to – Leticia Dean’s “Lean Routine”. I bet I can’t do that one either.