Strictly Come Dancing | 2019

Strictly does stretch the definition of celebrity increasingly each year.

The pro dancers are bigger celebs than the celebs these days.

You're a bit behind the times there.


I doubt the BBC cared at all about the GMB incident. This reveal strategy is all about generating chatter, and the "leak" only helped that.


I did mention the other day that I thought Strictly could have hit back at The X Factor on two fronts by doing their own All Stars this year, and looking at this cast perhaps they should have done. I guess though their Christmas specials tend to tick that box.

You really think retreading your greatest hits will sustain a 14 week long show? The international versions of it have all flopped. The audience wants new journeys, heroes and villains(Hello Seann Walsh). Everybody already knows that Anne Widdecombe cannot dance and that Alesha Dixon can.

Btw Alesha was z list and dropped by her label when she appeared. Casting these shows is about characters and personalities not who is the most famous. Which is why they turned down Rebecca Adlington much to her fustration a few years ago. She ended up on I'm a Celeb iirc.
I can guarantee you that the Mail will have have 100s of articles about Viscountess Weymouth by October. She is a bit of a "Character" and a much better booking than someone from Casualty or Loose Woman

Yes, that's exactly right, the Christmas show does that kind of thing perfectly well and it's an amusing one-off where everyone has a laugh and they get high marks and that's what you want to see on Christmas Day, but nobody's interested in a whole series of it. As you say, it's all about the journey.

It's like on World Idol, which was a big flop, the judges could slag off Will Young but he could have happily turned around and said "Well, that's all very well, but I've sold millions of records". Here every time they get a low mark from the judges they can just say, "Well, I did win the bloody thing".

Anneka Rice! She’s a good pick.

We all make mistakes, or are you immune from the odd typo?

I actually totally forgot until reading something yesterday that Chris Evans had provisionally agreed to do it, can’t remember if he was still with BBC R2 at the time but either way looks like that isn’t happening this year!

He was still at Radio 2, but I think he said it in his final few shows and it was already known he was going to Virgin.

One of those you just knew wasn't going to happen. Alan Carr and Huw Edwards apparently said they would do it in interviews around the same time, but again I don't think they were ever going to happen.

'provisionally agreed to do it' is not how I'd describe it.

The reality was that Chris Evans announced he was doing Strictly (and only Chris Evans announced it), at the same time a lot of extra publicity around him starting a new Breakfast show on Virgin would have been incredibly useful to Chris Evans... I'd join the dots there...

Radio 1 DJ Dev has just announced he is taking part.

That’s the DJ hole filled now Chris Evans isn’t doing it!

There must have been some grain of truth to it? Surely if it was a total fabrication the BBC would have put something out rubbishing the story?