Born: February 26th, 1971
Died: April 18th, 2025
When Julian Benson made his grand entrance on RTÉ’s Dancing with the Stars each week, he would do so with a signature twirl – spinning across the dance floor, his colourful outfit sparkling under the studio lights. Flamboyant and fun-loving, the gesture was typical of Benson, who has died aged 54. Figuratively and literally, he spent his life twirling across dance floors – surmounting a childhood diagnosis of cystic fibrosis to become a giant of Irish choreography and, thanks to Dancing with the Stars, a welcome presence in the nation’s livingrooms.
Dancing with the Stars was that rare Irish adaptation of a globally successful format that took on a life of its own. Based on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, its ratings were stellar from the outset. And in its crucial early years, much of the appeal had to do with Benson’s warmth, vitality and positivity, which earned him the nickname “Captain Sparkle”. Hired as the “nice guy” adjudicator on the panel, he proved a natural fit for the role. As he once said of himself, “what you see is what you get. People often tell me that I’m just like I am on TV, but that’s who I am.”
In his four seasons on DWTS, Benson never had a bad word to say about anyone – and that optimism was infectious. Even viewers who couldn’t tell a waltz from a walnut were reeled in by the Dublin-based choreographer and talent agent, known for catchphrases such as “Cha cha boom” and “Box office gold”. It was no surprise that DWTS producer Larry Bass sought out Benson as a judge when the series was first greenlit. Bass realised DWTS needed Benson’s “sheer dynamism” and “larger than life” charm.
But if Benson glittered fabulously on RTÉ, his story was much bigger than any one TV series. He worked tirelessly at overcoming his cystic fibrosis and, while initially understandably reluctant to talk about his health, later became an advocate for living with CF.
The illness rarely held him back. At UCD, where he got a BA in English and Psychology, he put on elaborate fashion shows in aid of various charities in an Ireland just emerging from the dreary, conservative 1990s. They would grow in scale and ambition, moving to the RDS and featuring future household names like Rosanna Davison, Claudine Keane and Roz Lipsett. Around the same time, he set up the Star Struck Stage school in Dublin. He was also a mentor to up-and-coming talent: clients at the management company he founded in 1990, Julian Benson Management, included Boyzone member Mikey Graham and Fair City actors Maclean Burke and Donna Anita Nikolaisen.
Julian Benson was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1971 to Irish emigrant parents. His mother, Maura Benson Margetson (née Keogh) fostered his love of fashion, always ensuring Julian and his younger brother Adrian were immaculately turned out. His paternal grandmother Eirene (Rene) Benson had been among the first women to study mathematics at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1937 and going on to teach mathematics at Alexandra College in Dublin and Portora Royal School in Enniskillen. She was also a talented stage performer.
Julian was two when he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that usually affects the lungs and digestive system. Doctors estimated that he would be lucky to live past 13. As a child, he was a pupil at Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School in Bunbury, and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth.
He credited his mother with helping him to navigate the condition with a positive outlook and determination not to let it hold him back. “Your mindset and how you think about it is crucial,” he once said. “You adapt and work around it. There is modern medicine to manage it, but it’s also about your mind.” Maura dedicated her life to making sure he stayed well and, years later, he would repay that love and her faith in him when he nursed her during her terminal cancer.
The family moved back to Ireland in the late 1970s. Coming from the sunny southern hemisphere was a big transition, as he recalled to The Irish Times in January 2025. “I arrived from Australia with an Aussie accent, bleached blond hair and a scarf and blazer.”
Julian and Adrian attended the Irish language Coláiste Mhuire on Parnell Square in Dublin where he became a fluent speaker. “It surprises most people when I start speaking Irish,” he said. “They go: ‘Sorry? You speak Irish? You’re fluent?’ I say: ‘Yeah. Don’t ever judge a book by its cover.’”
If eternally amiable, Benson was also highly driven as a young man. “I hate to be beaten – I absolutely hate it,” he once said.
He was fond of recounting a story about an audition he had missed for a big advertising campaign. The dancers had already been hired, but “I was young and desperate, but maybe I thought I had a bit of talent. To be honest, I felt really hard done by, but I wouldn’t let it go. I rang up the choreographer and said: ‘You don’t know me but my name is Julian. Please give me a chance. Meet me and give me 10 minutes of your time’.”
The casting agent agreed to meet the following day. Benson described the sequence as “like something out of Flashdance”. He remembered: “She said, ‘What have you got for me?’ I gave it everything. I danced, I pirouetted, I jumped, I spun, I sold it with everything I had. She booked me and I haven’t looked back. That’s how driven I was. There I was with my leg warmers and my little bag, and it meant everything to me.”
Just as with that Flashdance-like audition, Benson approached his health with a mix of positivity and bloody-mindedness.
“Every case of CF is different and different people are affected by it to a different degree – that’s important to say. I have a regime that I follow,” he revealed. “I wake up in the morning, take my medications, do 25 to 30 minutes of physiotherapy to clear my lungs, and get my day started. In the evening you do it again, taking antibiotics before bed.”
Unwilling to be defined by CF, for much of his career, he preferred not to speak about his health. He finally decided to break his silence after missing several episodes of Dancing with the Stars. “Because he was getting sick during the show, he felt it was inevitable he was going to have to talk about it and he bravely went on national television,” Bass said.
But he did more than just speak about CF. When he appeared on The Late Late Show in 2020 to talk about his health, he pledged to establish a charity that would provide a “home away from home” for family members of people receiving hospital treatment for CF. He went on to found the Julian Benson CF Foundation and, in early 2025, opened Tranquility House on Grosvenor Road in Dublin 6.
Benson stepped away from Dancing with the Stars after a fourth season in 2020. In 2024, he underwent a kidney transplant, having received dialysis treatment in St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, for a number of years. Amid all the ups and downs, he remained close to a tight-knit group of friends he had known his since early teens.
“Life is too short. Having a kidney disease has made me more ambitious than ever to work on our project, and to help people. I don’t take anything for granted,” he told The Irish Times in January, his face lit up with that familiar wicked grin. Friends remembered him as a maverick and a force of nature who could light up a room and injected much-needed colour and sparkle into 1990s Ireland.
Julian Benson is survived by Adrian, sister-in-law Rachel, nieces Leah and Ailbhe and nephew Cian, his cousins and other family, a steadfast group of close friends, and a wide circle of acquaintances.
