Strictly Come Dancing is rotten to the core – tears, bullying and affairs make it Hunger Games on speed
STRICTLY Come Dancing is the apple of the BBC’s eye.
One that’s rotten to its core . . . Yep, the Beeb has pulled a blinder — convincing us the show is woker and woker when, in reality, it’s Hunger Games on speed.
Forget the rictus grins, the jazz hands, the fake tan, the sequins.
And don’t be fooled by the cutesy on-camera camaraderie with Tess and Claudia. Oh no.
Strictly is one big hot mess of tears, tantrums and terrifying ambition.
Not to mention conjugal dissolution. Marriages break, illicit fantasies flourish and celebs are bullishly critiqued like cattle at market.
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On Saturday night, after being told she faced the dance-off, Fleur East reportedly burst into tears.
And in her new autobiography, Gabby Logan cites rampant sexism, saying she was booted out of the competition for being “too competitive”.
“I was just training hard, and then perhaps looking a bit too disappointed if I got a low score,” she writes.
“Essentially, I think I was showing all the signs of being a ‘sportswoman’.”
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And what of the infamous Strictly Come Dancing curse? Fear not.
It’s already struck; Nikita Kuzmin has split from his girlfriend of five years.
Doubtless there’ll be more to follow.
Because absolutely no-one in a relationship — no-one wholly sane anyway — enters Strictly without acknowledging they may fall head over heels in lust with their partner.
And with a history of heartbreak, what do Strictly producers do to try to mitigate the curse?
Why, pair gorgeous single dancers with bored, middle-aged, married blokes for starters.
Last year, poor, chaste, very Christian Dan Walker looked like a man wrestling with his very soul, partnered with 5ft9in blonde, temptress, Nadiya Bychkova.
He duly resisted temptation, but she later split with her fiancé and started dating fellow pro Kai Widdrington.
Last laugh
Everywhere you look, someone’s at it on Strictly.
And every year fans rush to analyse the sexual chemistry, encouraging more kissing, more cheating . . . If BBC execs really wanted it to be all about the dancing, they’d scrap the public vote.
This is Strictly sport. A family-friendly entertainment show? Pah! The more headlines, and social media hashtags, the better, darling.
This year’s show is its most diverse. With two same sex couples, a former Paralympian, plus various ethnicities, accents, ages and body shapes, the BBC has been busy ticking those boxes.
Miseryguts who don’t like this were quick to complain. As they always do.
Viewing figures were down, it was mooted, because people didn’t want diversity shoved down their constricted little throats. Nonsense.
On Saturday, 8.3million people tuned in to see Tony Adams take off his shirt and samba “sexily” (the inverted commas are doing a lot of heavy lifting here) to The Full Monty.
Ah, Tony: that white, middle-aged, multi-millionaire, cisgendered bloke. Box ticking at its finest.
Tony, like many a middle-aged man, can’t really dance. But he really, really tries . . . and there lies the magic of Strictly.
But when BBC execs cast a man nicknamed The Donkey, they knew what they were doing — providing the comedy act.
For once, though, we’re all having the last laugh.
Make no bones about it: Strictly Come Dancing is NOT woke — which is precisely why it remains a Saturday night staple.
No end to the stigma
THE trans youth charity Mermaids was last week forced to shut down its vital helpline for young people due to “intolerable abuse”.
Trans people account for about one per cent of the population – yet the chatter around them is disproportionately huge. And often overwhelmingly cruel.
Take people like Caroline Farrow, a priest’s wife who believes someone’s gender is biological and unchangeable.
Which is totally fine, and everyone is entitled to an opinion, etc etc.
Yet staunch Catholic Mrs Farrow’s anti-LGBTQ Twitter rants seem anything but kindly and Christian.
Why a married mother of five is so put out by such a tiny proportion of the nation, people she will never have to interact with if she so chooses, is genuinely baffling.
Mermaids – by no means a perfect organisation, but one largely doing its best to help trans kids and their families – has saved countless lives.
Issues of sporting fairness aside, will the stigma around trans people ever end?
Boiling point
MADONNA probably won’t be plugging her new album on Lorraine, then.
“She looks like a boiled egg,” opined the Scots host on her show yesterday.
Nothing like a spot of female solidarity.
Desperately Seeking Attention– 18-19
Right barrel of laughs
WELL, this sounds a right barrel of laughs.
A remake of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, below, has gone suitably 2022 (read: Woke).
Gamekeeper Mellors is, apparently, “intellectually elevated, spending nights alone reading James Joyce”, while he bonds with Constance over “newly hatched pheasant chicks”. (No euphemism).
According to a review in The Times, “It is thus an emotionally sophisticated union, and not just a guttural jaunt.”
Give me a guttural jaunt over Joyce any day of the week.
Scary is part of life
IT was Mental Health Day yesterday.
The Government unit responsible for improving national public health policy has unveiled a new campaign urging people to “be kind to your mind” to mark it.
According to The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, which sounds straight out of Orwell’s 1984, the “Sunday scaries” affect more than two-thirds of Britons.
They are now offering people a personalised “mind plan”, giving tips to help deal with Sunday night-induced anxiety.
Obviously it’s great the so-called “nasty party” is trying to help us be collectively kinder to ourselves. BUT . . . the Sunday night blues have been around since time immemorial.
Doubtless cavemen panicked about where their next woolly mammoth was coming from, or how they were going to heat their caves in the midst of an energy-crisis especially nippy winter.
I used to get a psychosomatic headache every Sunday afternoon, so dreading double maths, or an impending b******ing for not doing my homework, was I.
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Low-level anxiety is part of life. Exams, driving tests, heartbreak – they all contribute, and without them we’d never experience what it is to be human. To be fallible, and vulnerable.
I fear by giving a name to something so fundamentally normal, we are giving the next generation a life get-out clause and trivialising those with very real, and sometimes grave, mental health issues.
Not biting the hand that feeds
NOT all the young cast of Harry Potter are spoilt, unappreciative little brats.
Turns out Tom Felton, ironically who played baddie Draco Malfoy, is the real hero of the pack.
While castmates have been quick to turn against author JK Rowling over her divisive trans views, Tom refuses to bite off the hand that fed him.
“No one has single-handedly done more for bringing joy to so many different generations and walks of life,” he said.
“I’m constantly reminded of her positive work in that field and as a person.”
A masterclass in handling a thorny issue brilliantly.