I am outraged at the press surounding the axing of alrene and replacing her with alesha .

I love alesha , her dancing experenice is yes not as experinced as arelene but i think alesha is being added to the panel for her experirnce on strictly and her perfance talents.

its not her fault she got offered the job , if you got offered the job u would turn it down. If you would turn it down ur lying

On the age matter its wrong to get rid of older people on tv but i dont feel thats the problem .

Also i know singing singing and dancing is different but look what cheryl cole has done for the x factor . She replaced sharon osbourne. It bought a new lease of life into the show and i feel that is what will happen with strictly come dancing. Also the panel there is no diversity on it with bringing darcey and alesha in .

Feel better for that, OP?

Please read the T & C's of using this forum and not use text speak.

Same old, same old.

lets give alesha a chance even if we agree/disagree with arlene sacking

I really do like Alesha very much, she is lovely, but she has no credentials to be a judge. If Tess was going on maternity leave (?), Alesha would make a good stand in presenter but it is not right that she is a judge. I don't know why she accepted the position, apart from the obvious (money), and she makes plenty of that doing what she is good at.

Hand on my heart, I would turn it down. I would never take a job I wasn't qualified for, and that is purely for selfish reasons. It would be bad for my self-esteem, and there would be no security in it because I could never be confident that I wouldn't be asked to leave. And it being televised for all the nation to see just makes it worse- why would you want millions of people to see you making a mess of something?

No. I don't think she would even have won her series given a fair fight against Gethin. She certainly does not deserve to be on the judging panel.

I think she would and I'm with Monkseal that it was better that Matt made the final giving her more of a chance to win as she deserved it more than Gethin.

I don't know why Alesha accepted this I must admit because not only is she wrong for the job but it means that anyone who ever disliked her now has ammunition and some folks who previously liked her will be turned against her by it including I suspect some of the pros who previously respected and admired her.

Define fair fight- you might argue it was hardly fair that she was dancing better than Gethin but being beaten by him in the public vote for other reasons

I don't think it really matters whether she was the best dancer in her series, or in the history of the show. None of the celebrities has enough training in the course of one series to have even a hope of being able to spot technique in others.

Why? Gethin - or any of the better dancers - also deserved to win.

Still Geth has made up for it on the tour.

Sorry completely off topic!

You could certainly make an argument for Gethin winning, but I think most people would say Alesha deserved it because she was consistently excellent, which Gethin was not.

OK, well now you've said that . . . . . .

Oh God here we go again, Gethin didn't win and he wasn't better.............his feet turned in and he had either banana hands or flat hands dependent on which dance he was doing.
Alesha, from the knees up was a showman, from the knees down it was a catastrophe, but she won it because of her showmanship and of course Brucie selling her as the next Beyonce, what a laugh.

This isn't a Rachel/Tom situation, where Rachel absolutely destroyed him. Gethin won a couple, literally a small handful, of shows on tour - and he wasn't against Alesha!

That is exactly why people like Alesha are successful, because they are confident and dont sit around worrying what people like you think, the same logic could have applied when she was offered the chance to dance in Strictly, but she took the chance and she was fantastic, as i am sure she will be on this series

I wasn't saying that Alesha didn't deserve to win. I you look at the post I was answering the poster said that she deserved to win more than him. All of the final four deserved to win in 2007.

honestly - yes I would have turned down the job - i wouldnt be qualified to judge the show, I dont have the experience. Alesha should have turned the job down too

I don't see what the problem is, Dancing on Ice have two judges that have zero ice dancing experience, at least Alesha learnt how to dance.

Yes but the two Dancing on Ice judges who have no skating experience are both professional dancers and coreographers (infact exactly what Arlene is) and are there to judge performance (as the other 3 judges comment on the skating) Alesha has zero professional dancing training or experience and is therefore not qualified to judge other people dancing.

Maybe Alesha will be there to just judge the performance then, if DOI has unqualified judges that base on different things than the other judges then I don't see why it can't work on SCD.

You have just outline the problem with the judging panel of Strictly for the start the panel was never right where in DOI is split 2 choreographers and 3 skaters Strictly had one ballroom dancer but none of this is Alesha's fault it is the BBC's

The judges on DOI are the reason I don't watch it. I like SCD because the judges are qualified - it lends authority to the show and makes it into something more than a show where celebrities can just use it to try to get back into the limelight.

But 3 out of 5 of the DOI judges are qualified, with Nicky and Karen being successful ice dancers and Robin being a world champion figure skater.

1 out of 4 of the SCD dancers is qualified (Len) (Bruno, Craig and Arlene are choreographers, but not in the ballroom and latin discipline and so only have some related expertise. Craig has written a book on ballroom dancing although it is difficult to tell how much was self authored).

Like kp2ni I think the DOI panel is better balanced.

You are forgetting of course that she had 3 or 4 months of intensive training with Matthew Cutler during the series, and i am sure that is a lot more ballroom or latin training than MOST of the judges have ever had ( expect perhaps Len) PLUS she had to perform in front of the judges and viewers on live TV every week, so i find it hard to agree that she is not qualified
to comment on others beginning the same experience

How could Alesha POSSIBLY have been underqualified for a "celebrities with no experience learn to ballroom dance" show? Unless her experience with ballroom dance was actually less than zero, and somehow going into negative figures...

But DOI had a choreographer who marks on performance and detail and one of the very top of the West End's musical theatre performers who has done all the biggest dancing roles. The equivalent of Alesha would be Suzanne or even Bonnie or Clare and all three of those had real training as dancers.

Alesha is a fine person and a fine judge if they want to try and make the judging panel more viewer friendly but surrendering to the anti-Judge vote or trying to appease it by looking nicer is so unlikely to work it doesn't make much sense trying.