MISSING YOU ALREADY, STRICTLY COME DANCING... BY SANDRA HARRIS.
MISSING YOU ALREADY, STRICTLY!
BY SANDRA
HARRIS. ©
STRICTLY COME DANCING held its twentieth final the other
night, and peel my tangerines if it wasn’t a total glamour-fest! My kids and I have been watching it
for about twelve or thirteen years now and it’s been the highlight of our
winter televisual viewing season ever since. This year they celebrated their
twentieth anniversary and this added an extra element of nostalgia and
excitement to the whole thing.
Back in the days of X FACTOR, when the two shows would
clash on rival stations, we’d have to make do with watching STRICTLY during
the breaks of Simon Cowell’s massive brainchild (that’s kind of an odd
image, isn’t it?), but, with the demise of X FACTOR, it’s been STRICTLY
all the way ever since on a Saturday night.
It's a dancing talent competition show with ‘celebrities’ as
the contestants, as opposed to the ‘ordinary’ folks utilised in regular talent
shows. I put ‘celebrities’ in inverted commas because, sometimes, they are
Z-listers at best and most of ‘em just belong to the BBC in some way anyway, as
in, they’re television presenters, newsreaders, weathergirls, or children’s TV
presenters, things of that ilk.
The celebs each get assigned a professional dancer who works
on the show. We used to love the bit where they matched them all up in the
studio and a handsome male dancer, say, would have to pretend to be
ecstatically happy to be partnered with the oldest, wrinkliest and heaviest
lady celeb.
I know that’s a very un-woke thing to say, but it’s true,
lol. It works the other way too, of course, with the lady professional dancers having
to cheer and whoop about being partnered with a decrepit auld fella who makes
Shrek look like Pierce Brosnan.
The show’s presenters are Tess Daly, wife of TV presenter
Vernon Kay, and Claudia Winkleman, she of the glossy, flake-free hair from the Head
& Shoulders adverts. Dear old Bruce Forsyth, legendary entertainer,
actor and gameshow host, used to co-host the show with Tess before he passed
away in 2017 at the ripe old age of eighty-nine.
Bruce was a legend but Tess and Claudia are well suited to
each other and seeing them on the television every Saturday night is a bit like
getting a visit from two close friends. I’m not exaggerating or being sappy
when I say this. My kids and I have always found it to be the warmest,
friendliest show on the air and we’ve always likened it to getting a great big
sparkly hug from your telly-box.
The judges are lovely too. Craig Revel-Horwood is the
pantomime villain who, even if you dance like Baryshnikov, will always find a
way not to take out his Number Ten paddle. ‘Your thumb was sticking out,
dawling,’ is a favourite response, along with ‘That was a dawnce
disawster, dawling!’ But he’s as soft as butter, really.
Motsi Mabuse is a South African dancer and TV star, and the
sister of Oti Mabuse, who used to be a dancer on the show. Motsi has no problem
with showing her emotions while judging the various dances. I’m the same
myself, if a dance is in any way moving. A big box of Kleenex might just
get me through an episode, if I’m lucky…
Shirley Ballas, a dancer known as the ‘Queen of Latin’ for
her numerous competition wins, is Head Judge on the panel. She has an eye for
the fit male body, especially a nice chest with abs, and did you know that it’s
never too early for a ten from Shirley…?
Personally, I prefer not to see tens being handed out like
sweeties on the show until the later stages; I want the celebs to work for
their tens, not have them handed to them on a plate, tsk tsk.
Anton du Beke used to dance on the show- he famously wiped
the floor with Ann Widdecombe one year- and now he’s a judge. He was brought in
to replace passionate British-Italian dancer Bruno Tonioli, but it’s Len
Goodman he’s really channelling.
Len, a professional ballroom dancer who used to say funny
Cockney things like pickle me walnuts and other stuff like that on the show,
sadly passed away in 2023 aged seventy-eight, but his seat’s being well warmed
by Anton, so that’s okay.
Then there’s the so-called ‘Strictly curse,’ the term
given to the fact that the professional dancers and their celebrity partners
are always getting off with each other and sometimes marriages even end and are
replaced by new relationships.
It’s all that sweaty close contact in the training rooms, and
have you seen how intimate and steamy some of those dances are…? You
wouldn’t give in credence. The lifts and cartwheels frequently involve a little
manoeuvre I like to call the ‘fanny-to-face.’ It’s hard not to raise an
eyebrow, lol.
It’s not all sweetness and light on the show, however. It’s
been mired in controversy all year over allegations that some of the professional
dancers bullied their celebrity partners, and now, because of that, two of the
hottest guys on the show have left STRICTLY and chaperones are being hired to keep an
eye on the lot of them in the training rooms. That’ll certainly cramp the style
of any professional dancer or celeb hoping to cop off with their partners
behind closed training room doors…
The show is quite progressive usually in its choice of
celebs. It’s been won in recent years by both a deaf woman and a blind
man- this year’s winner, Chris McCausland- and loads of Paralympians and
disabled people have taken part over the course of its tenure. It was also the
first show- after ITV’s DANCING ON ICE- to feature same-sex couples
dancing together.
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