AMANDA PLATELL: I can see through Strictly's ludicrous bias. No wonder viewers are taking their revenge
The judges have consistently voted them bottom of the leader board, but on Sunday came the shock news that Strictly’s Pete Wicks and Chris McCausland will cha cha cha into the semi-finals thanks to the public vote. I’m wondering if the lunatics have finally taken over the asylum that Strictly has become. If so, hurrah!
At last, a reality check for judges Shirley Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke: it’s not them but we fans who get the final say over which celebrities dance on.
Week after week, while the judges scored Pete low – and appear to patronisingly give Chris better scores due to the fact he’s blind – we fans have voted in our millions to keep them in – not in spite of their often terrible dancing, but because of it.
For they are the embodiment of the original promise of Strictly: a ballroom dance show for beginners. Their dancing might be flawed but they were willing to be wooed by the waltz and seduced by the salsa.
Which is a far cry from what we have witnessed in recent years. Instead, the show has welcomed a slow creep of celebrities with some training or professional experience, who have a grotesquely unfair advantage over beginners like Pete and Chris.
Now, we are taking our revenge. For too long all the judges have taken all the attention. Yes I am thinking of you, Shirley, head judge, who on Saturday transformed into Miss Trunchbull for Musicals Night, but looked more like a cadaver who’d been dug up from a grave. Or Anton who looked like a giggly girl as ‘Rod Stewart’ in a long blond wig. And Craig as some kind of cross-dressing dominatrix.
The dance competition's judges Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse, Shirley Ballas and former Strictly professional Anton Du Beke
When Strictly started 20 years ago, we had the venerated Len Goodman as head judge, who only needed a smart suit to carry his authority, alongside the eloquent Arlene Phillips. They both knew the show was about the dancers, not them, with Brucie encouraging we amateurs at home to just ‘keep dancing’.
Now the judges, who have tried their best to eliminate Pete and Chris and look like they are chewing wasps every time the public saves them, must surely rethink their Strictly strategy. Their favourite dancers – the ones with professional experience – whom they have scored so high on the leaderboard, have ended up in the dance-off, voted out by viewers.
That’s another bugbear. Every week the judges unanimously agree on which couple should be saved in the dance off. There’s no disagreement any more. How unlikely is that – unless they’ve colluded and cooked up the result they want together?
How often have we heard Motsi, Anton, Craig and Shirley say through gritted teeth that ‘neither couple deserved to be in the dance-off’? A dig surely at ‘lesser dancers’ like Pete and Chris who are both still standing.
Fan favourites Chris McCausland, left, and Pete Wicks, right, with their dance partners on Strictly Come Dancing
As one Strictly insider said of Pete: ‘After years of complaining about people with dance experience excelling on Strictly, he is someone who’s obviously a complete amateur, who’s thrown himself into the contest and embodies the spirit of the show.’ We and his 1.8million Instagram followers agree.
Of course, there has been the added sauciness of the almost overtly sexual Pete and his off-screen antics: he is in an on-and-off relationship with I’m A Celebrity’s Maura Higgins, who alluded to their romance in the jungle this week, and there have been rumours of a romance with his pro dance partner Jowita.
No such drama from comedian Chris McCausland, who’s not just an amateur but totally blind and had never danced a step in his life until Strictly. He is happily married to wife Patricia, with whom he has a ten-year-old daughter Sophie.
Yet Strictly fans have taken the ‘blind guy’ and the ‘hot guy’ into their hearts, much to the despair of the judges.
All of which tells us something else about the way viewers see Strictly’s attempts to rehabilitate its reputation after Amanda Abbington’s accusations earlier this year of ‘abuse’ against her pro partner Giovanni Pernice – that, she says caused her PTSD – the most serious charges of which have been dismissed.
Abbington almost destroyed Strictly, yet its loyal fans have risen up in 2024, in the show’s 20th anniversary year – proving we don’t tune in for the pantomine of the ludicrous judges or their biased scores, but for the dancing.
The viewers decide who stays or goes. After it was revealed on Sunday that Chris and Pete would be staying in, Pete joked they were ‘like the Chuckle Brothers of Strictly’. And it’s fans like me who are having the last laugh.
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