Strictly Monkies, Preliminary Voting

Oh yeah, that’s right.

Strictly Come Dancing 7 Wk 10 Summary

The show’s complete inability to get any traction beyond Blackpool continues. For a start, yeah, Jade’s gone, and she’s mad as hell about it, sat on the front row for the entire show with a desperately sad face on, like the ghost of a dead stag-night stripper at a wedding, casting a pall over the entire evening. As does the near constant mentions of Ronnie Corbett, who was on the show for all of 5 minutes last week.

The dancing doesn’t do an awful lot to uplift the occasion either. It’s basically all ballroom all the time, with even the one Latin dance of the evening (Natalie Cassidy’s “samba”) being danced pretty much entirely in hold, with all the Latin flair of a badger in a sombrero. On the actual ballroom front, Ali basically vibrates her way through a foxtrot. I doubt a human being has been that nervous since they dispatched that runner to tell Jade she wasn’t allowed to dance any more. Laila bobbles her way through a reasonably adequate waltz, mercifully without a glowing neon Hello Kitty ankle-brace, and Chris does a entertaining, if content light (it’s basically a bunch of turns, a half-hearted fleckerl and a WHOLE LOT OF PIVOTS) Viennese Waltz. Really the only interesting part of the evening is Natalie Lowe sticking her two fingers up at “Fred & Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiinge” and doing an American Smooth that’s basically a load of contemporary dancing and a great hoofing massive lift and therefore starting this week’s Pointless Internet Debate. It’s not necessarily terribly enjoyable, but it pisses Len off, so I’m all for it.

The announcement of the new dances that are being performed next week is a bit of a damp squib as well, at least for me personally. Did we really need to see more tweecore Americana on this show? Apparently we do, because next week we’ll be watching a bunch of “Charlestons” (gurning) and “Rock N Rolls” (gurning plus probably that sodding “playing the lady’s leg like a guitar” move). Joy.

It’s left to the filler to save the day, and bizarrely it kind of does, with the return of Bennett-Domination (ie they swing dance to The Noisettes), a truly ethereal and unnerving (in a good way) rumba and DAME SHIRLEY BASSEY cussing out Bruce and singing some trite Gary Barlow rubbish, but still…DAME SHIRLEY BASSEY. She should definitely be a contestant next year. Pair her with Ian for maximum awesome please.

Oh yeah, results, erm, unsurprisingly Ricky Groves ends up in the bottom 2 again, with a tango that kind of defies description, but not as much as Erin’s costume does (for real). Laila joins him, because the public is so very very over her and her ankle and all the attendant drama. The judges save her unanimously of course, because they’ve been looking at him like a dried-up turd for three weeks now. I guess he wasn’t what this show was about after all.

Dancing With The Stars Week 8

Apparently there was a ballroom round this week? I can’t imagine anyone noticed.

Strictly Come Dancing 7 Wk 9

*sniff*

X Factor – Queen Week

Hot on the heels of “Songs From The Movies” week? Oh X Factor, you are really spoiling me this year. What next? Stereophonics Week? Pixie Lott Week? Vacuum Cleaner Noise Week?

Strictly Come Dancing 7 Wk 9 Summary

So if Blackpool was a beautiful high-flying ballroom dream, then this week was not so much coming back down to Earth with a bump, so much as smashing into it at firey terminal velocity, causing widespread destruction on a scale that makes that 2012 bollocks look like a chip-pan fire. For starters Jade’s knee is fucked, perhaps terminally, so those of us who were waiting for her tango to redefine dance to the stage where we could feel comfortable naming our children after it (Jade Stango Rubery. It could work) can forget it. Just in case you didn’t get the point, we get to watch her realise that possibly her entire life is down the pan in second by second detail, and not even Claudia can make it better.

In less important news, the same thing happens on a smaller scale to Laila, but right in the middle of the floor, so it’s even worse, especially as you know “special” people will claim she’s faking it for sympathy votes (NEWSFLASH : SHE’S DOING A RUMBA WITH ANTON! SHE DON’T NEED ANY MORE THAN SHE’S ALREADY GOING TO GET!). Meanwhile Erin’s gimmick for this week is apparently dressing herself and Ricky up as Margaret Thatcher and Joe 90. Yeah, that’s going to end well.

To make matters worse Ricky Nipple starts a hundred debates about overmarking when Natalie Lowe pulls out a by turns too fast and too stationary jive for himthat snaps and judders like something out of Silent Hill, and then Natalie Cassidy ends those debates via comparison to her stumbling cross-eyed around the dance-floor in slow-motion and somehow getting 9s. It is literally inexplicable. The evening celeb-dance-wise is somehow saved by Chris and Ali both giving their all to dances that were never going to suit them, dragging them up to “somewhat watchable”. Which is more than anything else this evening was.

Oh and did I mention that Ronnie Corbett is here? For no reason? He is. And that Tess and Claudia are somehow trying to hold this rapidly subsiding show together with raccoon voices and reading competently off an autocue, because Bruce is unwell? And that there’s endless VTs in which people claim that Laila can dance Latin and that watching Brian & Ali’s burgeoning romance is fascinating and not awkward and then Ricky Groves has a full on nervous breakdown? And the filler is Kristina flashing her gusset about and a hip-hop demonstration routine danced to Frankie Vallie And The Four Seasons? And I apparently was not dreaming any of this, because there is not a cheese alive strong enough to conjure up visions that powerful and disturbing?

In the end Phil & Katya end up in the dance-off with Ricky & Erin and getting booted, despite having one of the better routines of the evening, probably because his knee too is on the verge of exploding, and frankly the show can’t take the insurance any more. And let’s face it, he’ll probably be back next week after we learn that Jade has had to have her entire leg amputated.

WORST EPISODE EVER!

Dancing With The Stars Week 7

TEAM TANGO DOBLE!

Strictly Come Dancing 7 Wk 8

Where’s the show from this week again?

X Factor – Songs From The Movies Week

I’ll get this out there now – Songs From The Movies week is always an abomination. Songs overplayed to the point of nausea, really dull obvious choices, musical theatre songs being called musical theatre, Meaty Minge Niki Evans doing “All That Jazz”, endless wank about what really constitutes “a song that has been in a film at some point, do music videos count as films, probably, shrug”. Also I watched this week’s show hung over. So this will not be a happy entry.

Strictly Come Dancing 7 Wk8 Summary

Yes, finally, after weeks of trailing and begging and moaning about the trailing and the begging, it’s TIME TO GO TO BLACKPOOL! And if last week belonged to the boys, then Blackpool went as a whole to the girls. Natalie & Laila both produced their first performance worth a damn in half a series, gleefully bounding through a Quickstep and swishing menacingly through a paso respective. Ali & Brian produced the first 40/40 of the series for a seriously Disneyfied Viennese Waltz, and as I said about Ricky Nipple, if you object to that getting the first 40, then prepare yourself for the wank over the first 50. Jade & Ian’s jive is also a highlight, with the pair of them producing enough psychotic energy to power the entire Blackpool Tower Illuminations for the rest of the year.

Also producing a strong effort for the girls are Katya and Flavia, both going great guns through performances (a rumba and a cha cha) in which their male celebrity partners do very little and do it badly (although more badly in Craig’s case than Phil’s it has to be said). Sadly Erin has finally run out of gimmicks for Ricky Groves, and he does a fairly rote salsamba that doesn’t charm anybody. Ricky Nipple’s tango looked on paper to have the potential to be a showstopper, but unfortunately there’s mistakes abounds, and Len calls out Natalie Lowe on the “OH THAT WAS ME!” bullshit he’s let slide from everyone else for 7 series now. Finally Chris & Ola do what’s apparently been called a “breakthrough dance” but I can’t see it. Maybe it’s because it’s a foxtrot, or maybe it’s because he still spends the whole dance flapping his gob and refusing to finish his lines properly or do anything not ugly with his hands. Shrug.

The girl power theme continues with the filler, with St Jill of Halfpenny making (another) triumphant return to lead the remaining couples through a group swing. To honour the war. Somehow. Oh and Bruce starts to sing half-way through said swing performance and bizarrely enough has a stronger more consistant voice than half of the professional singers have this year (*befuddled*) Making a less triumphant return is Penny Lancaster Stewart. Let’s just say she’s out of practice and move on. Poor Penny. Finally (although firstily in the time-frame of the show) is a pro-Viennese Waltz prefaced by Bruce screaming at me from the Blackpool Tower Ballroom blacony as though he’s Donald Trump. It’s truly magical.

Also magical is the worst two dances of the evening (Craig’s cha cha and Ricky’s salsamba) winding up in the bottom 2 and Craig Kelly going home. Not that we didn’t know it was going happen this way since 3 weeks back, but it’s always a relief to see it actually happen. Especially, by the looks of it, for Flavia. What’s not so magical? Alesha sucking the whole show into her drama black hole by whining to Craig in her comments for his dance that she isn’t personally allowed to micromanage the elimination order, reigniting the same boring arguments we’ve had about the judges vote and the public vote we’ve had for the past 6 series and on which topics THERE IS NOTHING NEW OR INTERESTING TO SAY.

Thanks Alesha. No really.