Dancing With the Stars judge Len Goodman announces his retirement from show

Len Goodman is hanging up his judge's paddle.

The longtime head judge on Dancing With the Stars announced during Monday night's live show that this season will mark his final season on the show. Goodman has been with the reality dance competition since across 31 seasons since its premiere in 2005 (excepting seasons 21 and 29).

Goodman revealed that next week's finale will be his last episode. He praised the series, saying how much he loved it and every minute of his time here, but that he wanted to retire to be able to spend more time with his grandchildren.

The announcement brought his fellow judges, Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli, to tears.

A professional ballroom dancer himself, Goodman has been an essential part of Dancing With the Stars since its inception. He began as head judge on the original U.K. series, Strictly Come Dancing, and he stayed with that series from 2004 through 2016. He began pulling double duty in 2005, until he retired from the British series in 2016.

After winning the British Championships as a dancer, Goodman went on to judge professional competitions before his television career. He's a fixture in the ballroom dancing world and also runs a ballroom dancing school in the U.K.

Goodman has long been the toughest cookie on the judging panel, bringing his British stoicism and dry wit to his estimations of the contestants. He's known for being hard to please and often holding the dancers to a higher standard than his fellow judges. His remarks often earned a chorus of "boos" from the studio audience, but in the later seasons, he also had become something of a font of wisdom for the younger pros and their partners.

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