Oh, please

Alesha doesn't have the technical knowledge of the other judges, but my line of though is that the celebs are the ones being judged, not the pros and I feel the emphasis will be on this for Alesha. As this years' celebs won't have any more time than Alesha had to learn their routines and steps, surely in general they will not be at a more proficient level than Alesha was when she competed, and therefore she has enough knowledge to give some sort of overall basic judgement? I know Alesha didn't execute everything in a fantastic way technically, but that doesn't necessarily mean she doesn't know how the steps/moves should be done (in general terms), just that she didn't always manage it, and for me, she was certainly a great performer.

I can totally see how those with dance experience feel it's a dumbing down of the show, and why so many people are upset by the decision. Plus, if the pros are being judged by Alesha directly, that will indeed be something I am completely against, but if Alesha keeps her focus entirely on the celebs, I don't see why she can't make a good contribution to the show and give her honest opinion at the same time. This is not to say I agree with Arlene going, that is a separate matter from what I'm talking about on Alesha alone.

This is not the role I would have chosen for Alesha, but I can't imagine she would presume her technical knowledge is sufficient to judge the pros or that she would even want to do that, and I think/hope she will balance her judgements accordingly. (Then again, I could be talking complete bobbins, because I know next to nothing about dancing, and usually vote for my favourite partnership whatever )

Studio Girl, haven't posted on this subject for ages, but I think you put the case for Alesha very well, even though I'm one of those people who wants to hear more about the technical stuff and so isn't very happy about the overall expertise of the panel and Alesha's appointment in particular.

However, given that things are as they are, I'm trying not to be too close minded about this and I've been thinking about how she could best add value with her comments. I suppose that it's still possible for Alesha to provide some input which isn't too generalised. For example, given that there are some steps which commonly appear, maybe she could direct her comments along the lines of "I thought you did that double reverse spin really well because I found that it's very easy to forget to ......" In some ways that would be more technical information than Bruno provides. (It would have been so much better, in my view, if it had been Bruno that she'd replaced as Arlene did provide some useful information). I still think it will be quite difficult for her to say anything negative though, and providing scores for the dances may also be a bit contentious.