Good post Kaycee - Craig has often siad that they are there to guide the viewers through the dance technicalities, which the majority of the viewers (me firmly included) won't be able to pick up on.

The viewers then decide what they liked to see from an entertainment point of view - me, personally, I like to see a dance that looks good to me, taking into account the training and how hard the celebrity has tried too, especially in the former weeks of the show.
As the Celebs progress, I expect them to be more proficient.

Let's hope the word "journey" can be avoided by presenters and contestants this year.

Not a chance.

There maybe an element of the 'pantomime villain', but I don't agree at all that is what the judges are there for.

Obviously we all watch for the performance, but I'll bet there are plenty non-dancing viewers like me who have watched SCD from the start and by listening to the judges when they talk technicalities have picked up bits and can now recognise some of those technicalities like toe/heel leads, etc. - and feel good when the judges mention something we have also noticed.

ITT has also been a good show for learning more about the technicalities of the different dances (as has this board!), so there will be alot more viewers now who do have an appreciation of the technicalities that when the show first started. Don't get me wrong as there are sometimes when Len will say he noticed something going wrong and I missed it completely, but I am no longer after 6 series totally ignorant of technicalities and I doubt if I'm alone.

I agree that mistakes like slips or stumbles should be marked on the recovery, but a 10 mark shouldn't be given - even on SCD. How many times before the last series did a judge (usually Len) say something along the lines of "If it wasn't for xxx mistake I would have given a 10..."?

I'm sure plenty of people will agree with me that the scores last year were totally out of control compared to any previous series with so many new records being set. Series 6 seemed to me to be much more on a par with DTWS which has always marked performances much higher in general than SCD. Doing this too early in a series leaves the judges no room to mark real improvement.

Watching the marks creep higher and higher earlier every year is what disappoints me most, because I don't believe we are seeing the equivalent improvement in performances. Thanks to the end of season stats produced by Quizmike we can see the impact of the judges' scores for Series 6 on the records now held for various things over all six series.

Top Scores (Male and Female)

Rumba - Rachel Stevens 39 Colin Jackson 36
Quickstep - Lisa Snowdon 40 Colin Jackson 39
Cha Cha - Lisa Snowdon 40 Austin Healey 35
Waltz - Matt Di Angelo 40 Alesha Dixon, Rachel Stevens, Lisa Snowdon 39
Salsa - Mark Ramprakash 40 Alesha Dixon 35
Smooth - Gethin Jones 38 Zoe Ball, Rachel Stevens 36
Samba - Zoe Ball 38 Mark Ramprakash 36
Foxtrot - Rachel Stevens, Lisa Snowdon 40 Tom Chambers 39
Tango - Rachel Stevens 39 Austin Healey 38
Jive - Jill Halfpenny 40 Gethin Jones 37
Paso - Austin Healey 38 Jill Halfpenny, Emma Bunton 37
VW - Alesha Dixon 38 Mark Ramprakash, Gethin Jones 36
AT - Mark Ramprakash 39 Rachel Stevens 39

Top 10 All-time Averages

Alesha Dixon 36.5
Rachel Stevens 35.8
Zoe Ball 34.9
Lisa Snowdon 34.8
Austin Healey 34.5
Tom Chambers 34.5
Emma Bunton 34.0
Jill Halfpenny 33.7
Colin Jackson 33.7
Mark Ramprakash 33.5

Number of tens awarded to each celebrity...

Rachel Stevens 25
Lisa Snowdon 20
Alesha Dixon 19
Matt Di Angelo 9
Austin Healey 8
Zoe Ball 7
Mark Ramprakash 7
Gethin Jones 7
Tom Chambers 6
Jill Halfpenny 5
Colin Jackson 5
Matt Dawson 3
Emma Bunton 3
Denise Lewis 2
Natasha Kaplinsky 1
Darren Gough 1
Louisa Lytton 1
Kelly Brook 1
John Barnes 1

So to answer the OP's question do I think the judges will "hone it in"? I certainly hope they will 'hone in' the scores.

If only - I avoided ti in my post


I tend to agree

BuddyB - great stats - or Thanks Quiz Mike, scary reading - the paddles needed to go up to 15 last year, so that there was somewhere to go!

What does 'hone it in' mean? There's no such phrase. Do you mean 'rein it in' or 'tone it down'? You can't just invent new words and phrases because they're sort of like something you've heard before. If we go down that route we'll be marking people for their armography and then where will we be?

There is now. This is really an economical composite of four questions:

Will Len hose it in, machine-gunning 10's faster than viewers can dodge the spray of paddles?

Will Bruno hope it in, encourage his favourites with arms waving like a windmill?

Will Craig hole it in (one)?

Will Alesha hoax it in?

An there I was puzzled about JohnFromWales lack of knowledge of our MODERN language, its commonly used in the most gifted and modern of users, do not worry I am sure the word will eventually arrive in Wales or it might be omited for a Welsh wordand so will be obsolete to you.

Could this be handbags at dawn?

I was thinking of throwing dictionaries at each other:yawn:

Yeah, like you own a dictionary.

'Hone' as a noun is a whetstone or sharpening tool. As a verb it means to sharpen or polish to a very fine finish. I'm not aware of any modern usage as an expression of 'limiting' exuberance. Perhaps you could provide an independent example? Don't worry if you can't, I was just trying to be light-hearted in comparing it to Craig's linguistic creativity from last year.

I think you should know JfW is a highly respected Master Wordsmith on here!

I've been honing my skills, don't ya know.

The judges need to....

1. Mark all the dancers OBJECTIVELY using the full range of marks available to them

2. Restrict themselves to making CONSTRUCTIVE comments only - no personal remarks or insults.

3. Keep their personal opinions to themselves (links in with 1 above) - I don't care who THEY like - I just want them to mark everyone fairly.

4. Not make any personal appearances on any shows other than ITT, and again objective and constructive comments about all contestants only.

5. Mark the dances they see on the night - errors and all. I don't care if contestant x has had a brilliant run so far in the show - if they balls up one night they get marked on the performance they actually gave - not the "performance I know they are capable of giving"

6. Recognise that some dancers have a head start on others and don't over praise those who do at the expense of absolute rookies. Of COURSE someone who has any experience of dancing will be better than someone who has only ever boogied at a disco in terms of posture, hands, feet.........

Basically judge everyone fairly on what they deliver on the night, and keep the acid comments under control - especially in the early stages of the competition. We could see for ourselves that the likes of Gary Rhodes, John Sergeant, Jessie Wallace, Kate Garaway etc were awful without having to listen to the judging panel ripping them apart. The reason these people survived as long as they did was a protest by the voters at the way the judges treated the contestants.

If only the judges (Craig in particular) could keep their attention grabbing acidic comments under control they would give the poorer contestants less chance of the sympathy vote.

and so say I too

Naughty steppers re-united

It's not used where I'm from either. I must confess to wondering about the meaning every time I see this thread.

If you Google search for "hone it in" this is the top pick. Clearly Digital Spy is once more at the forefront of linguistic development.

True, but without decimal points to mark to you either have to give someone you think is a bit better a whole mark more or you penalise the better one.There's also the murky area you mention where the dancing may be great, the choreography may be duller but more difficult and the music may be lousy but picked by someone else - do you mark for doing well with what you have or doing ess well with something better someone gave you? Thats what you have judges for and as its got a subjective element thats why you have 4 of them to even things out. Not clear that anyone else but the judges can weigh that lot of arguments.

Thats before you get to the murky world of how the dancers performances are ranked relating to each other and how the marks turn up to make sure that the one who was best on first gets more marks than the one second best on last. It looks likely to me that some tens people complain about are there because the total needs to be higher than the person next best in the order.

There's also a chicken and egg problem. When the public are voting en masse for the worst dancers ,and, more destructively, still not voting for the best couples, the judges I think try and make the point clearer by pointing out even more clearly with the marks that the best are better. Last series they went further by having a go at engineering the scoreboard (Eg underscoring Rachel and overscoring Lisa) so that the final didn't end up with only one or worse none of the best dancers. The public read this as favouritism - the judges may see it as countering illogical voting and maintaining the credibility of the competition. People do that in real life too - if someone marks someone unfairly down others may mark them up and if someone looks overmarked someone else may try and get the total lower. Its not good - but then neither is not doing anything in the same situation.


There's also the big mystery of the tour. Same judges (almost - is the difference significant?) Same dancers (but different males for comparison to Tom?) Marked in about the same order as the show. Did the judges say the same things? Result totally different - Tom nowhere, Rachel overwhelmingly the winner. Is it just clearer who is best on the tour or is it a different audience or does the show produce a different response in the flesh than it does with judges appearing mean down a TV screen? The answer may be there for the TV show .......or not........

Looking forward to the start of the series - no pressure btw!


Spot on - I think you should give a talk to the judges before the first show!


As always!


It will be in the urban dictionary by next week!

Thanks buddy

I don't mind seeing low marks where they are deserved - but I do object to the bitchy remarks which sometimes accompany them.

There is no need for the judges to make nasty comments - you can say that a performance isn't very good because xyz and it could be improved by ABC without calling the contestants names or insulting them. The judges are there to judge the performances they see (NOT to educate the viewers in something which 3/4 of the panel know the square root of chuff all about anyway! - yes Craig - that's aimed at YOU!!), not trying to provide "entertainment"at the expense of others by ripping their efforts apart.

You would think that after 5 series that the judges would have worked it out the nastier they are (in particular Craig and up to now Arlene) to a contestant - the more protest votes they get. And the more they favour or overmark a particular contestant the less votes they get, especially if they were nasty to another contestant, or ignored glaring errors.

Just mark objectively and fairly, keep the comments neutral and leave the entertainment aspect of the show to the dancers, Bruce and Tess, and the viewers will probably give the panel the result they want without the need to attempt to manipulate the result.

The voters got annoyed with the obvious favouritism towards certain couples last year, and the blatant manipulation of the scores to ensure that a certain mediocre dancer who should have gone weeks before got to the final.

So, so true. And isn't it amazing that there are so many people still riled by this (and I'm another one! )?

I'd like to think that the producers and execs of SCD6 now realise what a mess they made of the show last year.

However, judging by what we know so far about SCD7, I'm yet to be convinced they do ...

I don't think I have ever got so worked up about a TV show - the phrase 'nearly burst a blood vessel' springs to mind!

And what made matters worse is that I didn't even have a favourite last year (for the 1st time), so I had no axe to grind - I just couldn't stand what was going on!

The judges either thought we were all complete idiots or they really didn't realise how they were being perceived for almost the whole series!

I don't think I will ever get over it LOL!

who do we have left on the dujges panel now? i seem to be losing touch here,things happening too quickly?

The other three are still there - Len, Bruno and Craig.

well that must be a good thing