r/strictlycomedancing

For me it's the Argentine Tango. Even if it's not perfect, it usually ends up being one of the most memorable routines of the night.

They started daily, then nothing for a week, then nothing for two weeks. What is this strategy...

I;ve been rewatching some old seasons of Celebrity Masterchef from around 2014-2019 cos that's all they have on youtube and it's led me to go through and see how many strictly people have done Masterchef,

Craig Revel Horwood was a finalist back in 2007, Vito Coppola won it in 2024. And they've had a selection of contestants on Strictly be semi/finalists/winners such as Les Dennis, Richard Coles, Vicky Pattison, Greg Rutherford, Lisa Snowdon, Jodie Kidd, Dev Griffin and more who competed.

Going through the list of people who have done Strictly and Masterchef, despite little to no correlation, it led me to think about a new list of celebrities, some going years on from being popular and famous, to potentially be on strictly. Long list, but hear me out.

Helen Lederer - Comedian

Sarah Cawood - Singer and Presenter

Sally Gunnell - Olympic Athlete

Claire Richards - Steps singer

Andi Peters - Presenter

Stephen Amos - Comedian

Tracy-Ann Oberman - Eastenders & Friday Night Dinner actress

Lisa Faulkner - Actress, now Chef

Nihal Arthanayake - Presenter

Christine Hamilton - Journalist

Dick Strawbridge - Escape to the Chateau star

Danielle Lloyd - Model & TV personality

Phil Vickery - Ex-Rugby Captain

Nick Pickard - Hollyoaks actor

Gareth Gates - Singer

Cheryl Baker - Bucks Fizz singer

Jamie Theakston - Radio presenter

Ade Edmondson - Comedian

Janet Street-Porter - Journalist & presenter

Christopher Biggins - Comedian

Amanda Burton - Waterloo Road & Silent Witness actress

Charley Boorman - Presenter

Kimberly Wyatt - Pussycat Doll

Rylan - Singer & presenter

Angellica Bell - Presenter

Kate Bottley - Reverend & Gogglebox star

Barney Harwood - Actor

John Partridge - Eastenders actor

Gemma Collins - TV Personality

Kellie Maloney - Boxing manager & TV Personality

Neil Ruddock - Ex-Footballer

Jenny Ryan - Chaser

Tomasz Schafernaker - Weatherman

Bez - Happy Mondays singer

Munya Chawawa - Comedian

Duncan James - Blue singer

Megan McKenna - TOWIE star & singer

Su Pollard - Actress

Rita Simons - Eastenders actress

Joe Swash - Eastenders actor

Danny Jones - McFly singer

Gareth Malone - Choirmaster

Kitty Scott-Claus - Drag Queen

James Buckley - Inbetweeners actor

Alfie Boe - Opera Singer

Ashley Cain - TV Personality

Michelle Heaton - Liberty X singer

Chris Hughes - TV Personality

Jamie Lomas - Hollyoaks actor

Jodie Ounsley - Gladiator

Dawn O'Porter - Author & presenter

I said it was a long list and this for the most part is the more lesser known celebrities, and treat this as an excuse for me to provide a loooooooonnggg list of possibilities that i don't expect half of people to have ever heard of. If you made it this far, well done x

It was November 2022. The TV presenter Helen Skelton was 39. Seven months earlier, her husband of eight years, the rugby player Richie Myler, had left the family home. Overnight, she was the single mother of three children aged six, five and eleven months. Myler had just announced his new girlfriend was pregnant. Skelton was, she wrote in her memoir In My Stride, “middle-aged, dumped, depressed”. Now, she was standing in the wings of BBC’s Elstree Studios, dressed in a black lace-up corset, silver mini shorts and black stockings, about to appear in front of 13 million viewers in Strictly Come Dancing: high-kicking and strutting to Mein Herr from Cabaret.

“I was crawling around in suspenders, which was a far cry from where I had started all those weeks before.” The choreographer had told Skelton the dance contained a moment “where you can say ‘f*** you’”. She was speaking metaphorically, of course — a former Blue Peter presenter like Skelton would never do anything of the kind. Instead, she mouthed the words of Cabaret’s quintessential survivor, Sally Bowles, into the camera: “You’re better off without me.”

The audience erupted. The judges were ecstatic. Skelton, a farmer’s daughter from Cumbria, was suddenly the poster girl for wronged women everywhere. “It struck a chord,” she says. “One of the dancers said, ‘You did that for all of us, didn’t you?’ I wanted to have my own narrative. I was sick of the patronising looks, the ‘Ooh, how are you?’ I didn’t have the capacity to say, ‘I’m brilliant, how are you?’ That’s what the dance did.”

Read the full interview ^

1. No more sob stories - quite frankly I don’t care about the celebs or pros personal lives, what I care about is about is the dancing and consequently I would rather the videotapes focus on how the pro teaches the celeb.

2. No Dance off - The rules are not followed anyway for example when they saved JB over Paul Merson despite Paul outperforming JB in the dance off. They should go back to 2010/11 rules when deciding who to eliminate, the current system of the judges deciding essentially means producer choice.

3. 3 person finale with 4 dances, this is what they did in 2010/11 the key difference being each couple does a new dance they haven’t done before. This would mean the finale is less predictable and we see stuff we have not seen before.

4. Ringers - They should be allowed as they enhance the show and gives us exciting dances. However, there should be a rule stating that if they are trained in a certain dance style they are prohibited from doing it as a couples choice. Lewis’ couples choices will always be an asterisk as he was already trained, that would be like Oti getting 40 for the samba.

Just finished watching Amy Dowden's episode in WDYTYA and I'm left feeling more unnerved than moved.

She started the episode actually excited by the rumour that there'd been a murder in her family (red flag) and hoping for drama. But when it turned out her 3x great-aunt was actually the victim rather than the perpetrator, she seemed...disappointed?

She spends the rest of the episode trying to force a murder narrative despite the historians repeatedly offering perfectly plausible explanations. Is it really that hard to believe that two young teenagers (who were good friends) in the 1800's were unknowingly playing around with a loaded gun that accidentally fired? It still happens hundreds of times each year.

She puts a weird, conspiratorial spin on every single part of the story. Like when the historian explains how the boy moved the body inside the house, her immediate reaction is to assume he was hiding evidence. Her stare becomes so eery and comments so farcical that the historian visibly looks uncomfortable and diplomatically suggests another interpretation is that the 17-year-old had just accidentally shot his close friend, was in complete shock and didn't know what he was doing.

Despite the experts presenting the evidence (including two court cases) consistently leaning towards an accidental shooting, she is still insistent there's some huge cover-up or miscarriage of justice. I can't decide if she:

a) Is trying to push a narrative to give viewers what she thinks we want to see

b) Has a toxic form of confirmation bias

I'm curious how many Strictly viewers watch it.

View Poll

I've watched Strictly for so long that certain phrases have become automatic. As soon as someone's shoulders creep up or their frame slips, I can almost predict what the judges are about to say. Anyone else do this?

I’m really hoping for another drag queen 🙏🏻