Comments on: Ball of confusion

By: Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 09:49:35 +0000

(First time posting here…)

MartS – sorry to correct your correction, but there was a phone vote the week Kelly Brook went out last year – Kenny Logan was voted out (a bit like John Sergeant, he seemed to go way beyond his dancing skills). Which meant there were only 2 in last year’s final – Alesha Dixon and Matt Di Angelo. In fact, after Sergeant’s withdrawal from the contest, this was on course to be the third season in a row in which there’d only been 2 in the final, until the semi-final mix-up took it back to 3, which actually made it a bit better (and meant we got to see Tom’s fantastic showdance).

Thanks to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strictly_Come_Dancing#Series_5) for the names of the finalists!!

By: Jack Kibble-White

Jack Kibble-White — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:31:50 +0000

Thanks for the clarification MartS – I think my general point still stands – it’s all John Sergeant’s fault!

By: MartS

MartS — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:48:24 +0000

Jack, not quite.
Last series also have three dancers in the final show, as Kelly Brook pulled out very near the quarter finals due to a family bereavement. I think that week, there was no elimination phone vote.

Apart from last Sunday which was the first day since early October the show’s theme hasn’t been heard on either BBC One or Two, I’ve really enjoyed it.
Still not sure about Sir Brucie and his abillity to read autocue these days, Tess is still rubbish at ad-libbing to fill time, and I hate Claudia’s announcing of the guests on It Takes Two in a pitch so high my dog covers her ears in pain, but all in all (bar last Saturday 9.10 – 9.30pm) it’s been a tight, slick, well produced BBC show.

By the way – was Masterchef’s ‘food and ingredients expert’ Greg Wallace this years male emergency stand-by contestant? I’ve seen him in the guest seats a lot this series, but can’t connect him friendshipwise to any of the dancer celbs – bar Gary Rhodes.

By: Jack Kibble-White

Jack Kibble-White — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:39:39 +0000

Of course all of this stems back to the John Sergeant incident, as if he’d not left there would have been four contestants in the semi-finals. So all in all, a good business lesson there about how an unexpected problem can have unforeseen impacts further down the line.

By: Applemask

Applemask — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:54:59 +0000

How long before the licence fee is scrapped and Mark Thompson forced to resign over this?

By: Jonathan Haw

Jonathan Haw — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:16:30 +0000

They should have just got Brucie to fill for the last 10 minutes with a song & dance routine and a few showbiz anecdotes. It would have been the best thing on telly for years….

By: Graham Kibble-White

Graham Kibble-White — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:54:03 +0000

Now I understand exactly why they had to nix the phone votes, I don’t have a problem. But the situation was so badly explained on the night, at the time it looked like they were simply conspiring to ensure there were three couples in the final. And that was really annoying. Sitting through 90 minutes of telly for a huge cop-out at the end.

It does seem odd this situation hasn’t come up before. Or maybe it has, but they were never so paranoid as to address it.

By: Jennifer Turner

Jennifer Turner — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:09:43 +0000

Andrew is right. The tie-break rule has been mentioned on the show in the past, albeit not recently.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:38:55 +0000

I *think* the rule is that in the event of a tie, the public vote takes priority, so if they’d all ended up tied on 4 points, the one voted last by the judges would not be in the dance-off.