Can anyone give me a summary of what he said? The juicy bits anyway
He gave a snorting sort of answer when someone asked if things were really bad with James Jordan vs. BBC. Basically: YES!! Then he explained that James called in and said Ola was ill but she really was practising for The Jump and broke her leg. BBC was angry - he concluded with saying he was pretty sure neither would be back.
He said he can't swear to it but he believes that the judges watch the dress rehearsal to decide on comments and/or scores and he seemed definite about this point: they cast their scores 15 seconds before the dances end, so if something drastic happens in the last bit, there's nothing they can do (I wonder if this relates to Matt di Angelo getting 8's when he stopped towards the end of his dance and sat down on the steps, making it quite obvious he gave up?)
He said many of the partnerships would have been different if he had been in the cast instead of being replaced by Trent - and that he would never have been assigned Pixie due to height, since he's 5'8. He thinks Simon would have probably won had Robin not dropped out of the show. I think he defended the Pixie lift-gate issue, and he said every season there are contestants with a lot of dance training, and that you need that - that if everyone were on an even keel it would be boring, whether they were all novices or all semi-trained. So that's how it has to be. You need some good dancers in the competition to keep people tuned in.
He said the pros have at least some say on the order they do the dances - with someone bad, you want to do their best dances first; with someone great, you want to get the bad ones over with. (Obviously Tristan didn't want to do Jive first with Jennifer and he implied as much in an interview, so I know it isnt' 100% true that the pros pick the order.) And Jennifer left for Florida "for a break" the whole first week of rehearsal - oh, Robin touched on that too and said often they miss out on rehearsal time, before the show and during it.
He said doing ITT was a pain - takes a half day away from training and they hate that, especially as they get further into the competition. They have other promotional work to do also that takes their time, and that's a problem. That often they only have 2 or 3 days of the week - and that everybody usually takes Sundays off (and he laughed about the Results show being "pretend" live) - or maybe he said just the celebs always take Sundays off.
He said he wished he would get someone younger next time, and that he was fairly upset when he saw that he had Lisa Riley, wondering what he was going do with her.
He was asked if the partners sometimes didn't get along - and he mentioned Brendan and two or three of his partners but I can't remember which ones. Maybe Brendan and Lulu - I think he mentioned them first as a couple who didn't get on. Did Brendan have a partner named Pendleton? I think Robin laughed about how poorly they got along - oh, I didn't pay much attention to this because I haven't watched many seasons so didn't know what he was talking about.
He explained that before the season, they work one day per pro number - make a video - then when that dance comes up during the season, they study their video and rehearse it on a Monday. Often pros who are out of town with their celebrities have to rush to London for that rehearsal, then rush back to their celeb (like Alison in Birmingham - I think Sunetra - Frankie was on tour - I'm not sure who all he mentioned as having to travel to rehearse and then make the quick trips back for the pro number rehearsal.) Or maybe they can't go to where their celebs are because of that rehearsal ?? Something like that.
That's all I remember at the moment but maybe more will come to me...
Some of the less controversial bits -
- The pros genuinely don't know who they are going to be paired with until the last minute. Yes the pros are just acting happy when they get a Lisa Riley sized contestant (although Robin was very happy with Lisa by the end).
- Robin had good words for Dave Arch and his band, making sure the timing of the music suits the choreography in rehearsals.
- There's some negotiation between the pros and producers about the music choices but ultimately the producers make the decision. The pros wouldn't choose to dance a foxtrot to tango music, and so on (but we knew that didn't we?).
- The pros sometimes have to base themselves with the celebs for training and this means they can have a hard time traveling between home, their celeb, rehearals, ITT, filming video links, and so on.
- The celebs with dance experience do get less training time on the grounds of fairness, although Robin mentioned a number of celebs this series that had so much dance experience that one of week training wasn't going to help anyone else catch up.
- The judges have their own electronic voting system that they use 15 seconds before the dance finishes, and that gives times for the scores to be given to Claudia(?). OK maybe that's a bit controversial.
The premature voting of the judges is the confusing thing. What's so important about getting the scores 15 seconds earlier that means the judges can't score on the whole dance? It's pretty obvious that the judges should see the whole dance. Whatever is done with the scores should be done 15 seconds later and we can hear 15 more seconds from the judges to fill the time.
The video's totally closed and private now- I've tried searching using the key words I initially used (Robin Windsor Oakwood Studios) but the Q&A isn't anywhere- just dance lesson clips Sorry folks.
Well, well, well ... I wonder what prompted Robin to be so unguarded? I'm actually surprised as he's always seemed like one of the least outspoken pros, and with the teacher dance stuff on ITT he appeared keen to keep himself 'in' with the beeb, presumably with an eye on the next series. It's well-known that the producers don't like anything that could be seen as dissection in the ranks, so I guess he's got something else lined up for August-December 2015.
Well the video's gone private, at least for me, but my ears usually perk up with talk of heights (OCD I guess) and I'm almost positive that exactly what he said was, "I'm 5 ft 8 or maybe 5 ft 8 and a half"
I was also very surprised to hear that because I thought he was taller than that. Studying the pictures, I think Tristan might be a smidge shorter than Trent and Aljaz who look exactly the same, so I think Tristan is 5 ft 11 (maybe add a half inch) and Trent and Aljaz are 6 ft, like Brendan claims to be. Anton says he's 5'11.
But now, Kevin is quite a mystery. I think Rachel is 5 ft 1, like Janette, so maybe there's a photo of Kevin and Rachel together, but those darned heels always complicate things... They wouldn't by chance be doing their rumba barefoot? I'm also wondering how tall (or how short?) Pasha is.
I always thought Robin was around 5ft 9/5ft 10 - he looked to be of a similar height to Artem and Pasha anyway. Plus wasn't Lisa about 5ft 5?
I agree on Tristan/Trent/Aljaz - Tristan's height has been listed before as 5ft 11, and Trent and Aljaz have to be taller than that as they had Pixie (5ft 9) and Alison (5ft 10) respectively. So Robin would never have had Alison anyway. I'd say Anton's is right as well, considering Jerry Hall who he had a few series ago.
Kevin is supposedly 5ft 8 (and for those asking about Vincent, he was about 5ft 7), and Pasha about 5ft 9/10 - all of his partners have been somewhere in the 5ft 3 - 5ft 5 range.
Nice to hear Robin be so candid though, if a little unexpected!
Some of the less controversial bits -
- The pros genuinely don't know who they are going to be paired with until the last minute. Yes the pros are just acting happy when they get a Lisa Riley sized contestant (although Robin was very happy with Lisa by the end).
- Robin had good words for Dave Arch and his band, making sure the timing of the music suits the choreography in rehearsals.
- There's some negotiation between the pros and producers about the music choices but ultimately the producers make the decision. The pros wouldn't choose to dance a foxtrot to tango music, and so on (but we knew that didn't we?).
- The pros sometimes have to base themselves with the celebs for training and this means they can have a hard time traveling between home, their celeb, rehearals, ITT, filming video links, and so on.
- The celebs with dance experience do get less training time on the grounds of fairness, although Robin mentioned a number of celebs this series that had so much dance experience that one of week training wasn't going to help anyone else catch up.
- The judges have their own electronic voting system that they use 15 seconds before the dance finishes, and that gives times for the scores to be given to Claudia(?). OK maybe that's a bit controversial.
BIB
There have been celebs with a lot of dance experience who did not have any penalty imposed.
Robin did mention Kara because she did a Salsa with Mark Ramprakash and Harry Judd because he had done a Paso with Ola (and I think he also mentioned Susanna Reid in the same context). They were all penalised a weeks training for taking part in something like Sport Relief and not allowed to repeat their Salsa/Paso etc. on Strictly. He did make the point that the 1 week penalty made little or no difference.
The reason the scores have to be sent 15 seconds early is to allow time for some scripting to be done for the presenter who interviews them after the dance. Eg. Tess saying that is the highest score ever for a Samba etc.
The premature voting of the judges is the confusing thing. What's so important about getting the scores 15 seconds earlier that means the judges can't score on the whole dance? It's pretty obvious that the judges should see the whole dance. Whatever is done with the scores should be done 15 seconds later and we can hear 15 more seconds from the judges to fill the time.
According to the twitter of OakhamUK where the interview took place an edit is being processed with the last five minutes cut at 'his' request and 'others' wanted the whole thing cut. 'He' said he became a little too relaxed.
Wonder who the 'others' were?
James at a guess considering his outburst on twitter at Robin!
You're welcome! I'm not sure Robin will be so happy about our reminiscences - or James' angry tweets being recorded here. But it's spiced up the off-season, along with the tour doings.
You're welcome! I'm not sure Robin will be so happy about our reminiscences - or James' angry tweets being recorded here. But it's spiced up the off-season, along with the tour doings.
Yes Robin certainly has given us all something to talk about, what with that and the discussions about the National Television Awards I don't think we've even had any gushing about Simon yet today! ;-)
Yes Robin certainly has given us all something to talk about, what with that and the discussions about the National Television Awards I don't think we've even had any gushing about Simon yet today! ;-)
Simon is SO amazing. He's the best. I'm so looking forward to seeing Simon and Kristina, next month.
Lol, sorry but after reading your comment, I couldn't help myself. Although, I do love Simon and Kristina.
The pros work blimmin hard don't they? Good to hear that they do have some say over the order of dances and thus their longevity in the show to a certain degree. Guess they have to decide whether to play their big cards/dances early and build up a fan base eg Jake's Salsa or whether to save what they think will be their celeb's best dances until the second half of the series but risk an earlier exit. Interesting! Also curious to know why Robin thinks that Simon and Kristina would have won if Robin himself had been in the show. I can't quite work that one out.
Ok- so just for the sheer pointless –and totally untestable- fun of it all, I tried to imagine a different set of some pairs that might have led to a Simon win (new pairs in bold).
Gregg- Aliona Jennifer- Pasha Tim- Kristina
Thom- Iveta
Scott- Joanne
Alison- Aljaz
Judy- Anton
Steve- Ola Sunetra- Robin Pixie- Brendan
Jake- Janette
Mark- Karen Simon- Natalie
Frankie- Kevin Caroline- Tristan
My reasonings:
I'm only going on Tristan’s choreo for Jennifer, which to me was pretty flat, so maybe his choreo with Caroline would have been similar, thus leading to a non-win for her, plus her ringer status might have been more vulnerable without the public's love for Pasha.
No matter who she was paired with, Pixie’s ringer status was always going to leave her in Natalie Gumede’s shoes.
Natalie Lowe’s the right height for Simon and she seems to have much more public love for her now than when she was with Ricky Whittle so they might have been the perfect pair to beat off Pixie and Caroline.
I know this hasn't dealt with the Jake/Janette and Frankie/KFG pairings, but this was as far as I could get without my head hurting.
I loved Simon being paired with Kristina, but if memory serves, Robin said Simon should have won, not Simon&Kristina, so maybe he was originally paired with someone else.
Feel free to argue vehemently against/swap a few more round/ignore and get on with more worthwhile stuff.
I definitely think Brendan would have been partnered with Pixie had Trent not replaced Robin (hence his series-long mega-sulk and lack of graciousness towards Sunetra) but I can't see Jennifer being partnered with Pasha. She was almost too tall for Tristan so she would have towered over Pasha.
I definitely think Brendan would have been partnered with Pixie had Trent not replaced Robin (hence his series-long mega-sulk and lack of graciousness towards Sunetra) but I can't see Jennifer being partnered with Pasha. She was almost too tall for Tristan so she would have towered over Pasha.
Fair point- swap Pasha and Aljaz maybe. Although Alison's tall too- don't know if she's taller than Jennifer.
Comments
He gave a snorting sort of answer when someone asked if things were really bad with James Jordan vs. BBC. Basically: YES!! Then he explained that James called in and said Ola was ill but she really was practising for The Jump and broke her leg. BBC was angry - he concluded with saying he was pretty sure neither would be back.
He said he can't swear to it but he believes that the judges watch the dress rehearsal to decide on comments and/or scores and he seemed definite about this point: they cast their scores 15 seconds before the dances end, so if something drastic happens in the last bit, there's nothing they can do (I wonder if this relates to Matt di Angelo getting 8's when he stopped towards the end of his dance and sat down on the steps, making it quite obvious he gave up?)
He said many of the partnerships would have been different if he had been in the cast instead of being replaced by Trent - and that he would never have been assigned Pixie due to height, since he's 5'8. He thinks Simon would have probably won had Robin not dropped out of the show. I think he defended the Pixie lift-gate issue, and he said every season there are contestants with a lot of dance training, and that you need that - that if everyone were on an even keel it would be boring, whether they were all novices or all semi-trained. So that's how it has to be. You need some good dancers in the competition to keep people tuned in.
He said the pros have at least some say on the order they do the dances - with someone bad, you want to do their best dances first; with someone great, you want to get the bad ones over with. (Obviously Tristan didn't want to do Jive first with Jennifer and he implied as much in an interview, so I know it isnt' 100% true that the pros pick the order.) And Jennifer left for Florida "for a break" the whole first week of rehearsal - oh, Robin touched on that too and said often they miss out on rehearsal time, before the show and during it.
He said doing ITT was a pain - takes a half day away from training and they hate that, especially as they get further into the competition. They have other promotional work to do also that takes their time, and that's a problem. That often they only have 2 or 3 days of the week - and that everybody usually takes Sundays off (and he laughed about the Results show being "pretend" live) - or maybe he said just the celebs always take Sundays off.
He said he wished he would get someone younger next time, and that he was fairly upset when he saw that he had Lisa Riley, wondering what he was going do with her.
He was asked if the partners sometimes didn't get along - and he mentioned Brendan and two or three of his partners but I can't remember which ones. Maybe Brendan and Lulu - I think he mentioned them first as a couple who didn't get on. Did Brendan have a partner named Pendleton? I think Robin laughed about how poorly they got along - oh, I didn't pay much attention to this because I haven't watched many seasons so didn't know what he was talking about.
He explained that before the season, they work one day per pro number - make a video - then when that dance comes up during the season, they study their video and rehearse it on a Monday. Often pros who are out of town with their celebrities have to rush to London for that rehearsal, then rush back to their celeb (like Alison in Birmingham - I think Sunetra - Frankie was on tour - I'm not sure who all he mentioned as having to travel to rehearse and then make the quick trips back for the pro number rehearsal.) Or maybe they can't go to where their celebs are because of that rehearsal ?? Something like that.
That's all I remember at the moment but maybe more will come to me...
- The pros genuinely don't know who they are going to be paired with until the last minute. Yes the pros are just acting happy when they get a Lisa Riley sized contestant (although Robin was very happy with Lisa by the end).
- Robin had good words for Dave Arch and his band, making sure the timing of the music suits the choreography in rehearsals.
- There's some negotiation between the pros and producers about the music choices but ultimately the producers make the decision. The pros wouldn't choose to dance a foxtrot to tango music, and so on (but we knew that didn't we?).
- The pros sometimes have to base themselves with the celebs for training and this means they can have a hard time traveling between home, their celeb, rehearals, ITT, filming video links, and so on.
- The celebs with dance experience do get less training time on the grounds of fairness, although Robin mentioned a number of celebs this series that had so much dance experience that one of week training wasn't going to help anyone else catch up.
- The judges have their own electronic voting system that they use 15 seconds before the dance finishes, and that gives times for the scores to be given to Claudia(?). OK maybe that's a bit controversial.
I always thought Robin was around 5ft 9/5ft 10 - he looked to be of a similar height to Artem and Pasha anyway. Plus wasn't Lisa about 5ft 5?
I agree on Tristan/Trent/Aljaz - Tristan's height has been listed before as 5ft 11, and Trent and Aljaz have to be taller than that as they had Pixie (5ft 9) and Alison (5ft 10) respectively. So Robin would never have had Alison anyway. I'd say Anton's is right as well, considering Jerry Hall who he had a few series ago.
Kevin is supposedly 5ft 8 (and for those asking about Vincent, he was about 5ft 7), and Pasha about 5ft 9/10 - all of his partners have been somewhere in the 5ft 3 - 5ft 5 range.
Nice to hear Robin be so candid though, if a little unexpected!
BIB
There have been celebs with a lot of dance experience who did not have any penalty imposed.
Robin did mention Kara because she did a Salsa with Mark Ramprakash and Harry Judd because he had done a Paso with Ola (and I think he also mentioned Susanna Reid in the same context). They were all penalised a weeks training for taking part in something like Sport Relief and not allowed to repeat their Salsa/Paso etc. on Strictly. He did make the point that the 1 week penalty made little or no difference.
The reason the scores have to be sent 15 seconds early is to allow time for some scripting to be done for the presenter who interviews them after the dance. Eg. Tess saying that is the highest score ever for a Samba etc.
That would be sensible.
I doubt if it will be adopted.:D
James at a guess considering his outburst on twitter at Robin!
I'd imagine that Robin was pretty appalled to find his Q&A session had been filmed and posted to Twitter - especially given she Jordan indiscretions.
Yes I think so, and what happens if the BBC see the video?
They may not like some of the information he has disclosed. It's very risky...
You're welcome! I'm not sure Robin will be so happy about our reminiscences - or James' angry tweets being recorded here. But it's spiced up the off-season, along with the tour doings.
Ughhh James !!! Does he ever shut up >:(>:(>:( ?
Yes Robin certainly has given us all something to talk about, what with that and the discussions about the National Television Awards I don't think we've even had any gushing about Simon yet today!
Simon is SO amazing. He's the best. I'm so looking forward to seeing Simon and Kristina, next month.
Lol, sorry but after reading your comment, I couldn't help myself. Although, I do love Simon and Kristina.
Did he say why he didn't stay with her then?
He said when the producers saw him having a laugh with Lisa during rehearsals for the group dance, they decided to put them together instead.
Ok- so just for the sheer pointless –and totally untestable- fun of it all, I tried to imagine a different set of some pairs that might have led to a Simon win (new pairs in bold).
Gregg- Aliona
Jennifer- Pasha
Tim- Kristina
Thom- Iveta
Scott- Joanne
Alison- Aljaz
Judy- Anton
Steve- Ola
Sunetra- Robin
Pixie- Brendan
Jake- Janette
Mark- Karen
Simon- Natalie
Frankie- Kevin
Caroline- Tristan
My reasonings:
I'm only going on Tristan’s choreo for Jennifer, which to me was pretty flat, so maybe his choreo with Caroline would have been similar, thus leading to a non-win for her, plus her ringer status might have been more vulnerable without the public's love for Pasha.
No matter who she was paired with, Pixie’s ringer status was always going to leave her in Natalie Gumede’s shoes.
Natalie Lowe’s the right height for Simon and she seems to have much more public love for her now than when she was with Ricky Whittle so they might have been the perfect pair to beat off Pixie and Caroline.
I know this hasn't dealt with the Jake/Janette and Frankie/KFG pairings, but this was as far as I could get without my head hurting.
I loved Simon being paired with Kristina, but if memory serves, Robin said Simon should have won, not Simon&Kristina, so maybe he was originally paired with someone else.
Feel free to argue vehemently against/swap a few more round/ignore and get on with more worthwhile stuff.
Fair point- swap Pasha and Aljaz maybe. Although Alison's tall too- don't know if she's taller than Jennifer.