I hope the voting public do not focus on one competitor and vote to keep him or her in week after week out of sympathy, because they're nice.

Lets hope this series is about the dancing, and the worst dancer goes every week.

Ooooh I think it must be horrible to be the first one voted off. I wish two or three would be voted off first.

John Sergeant provided great entertainment last year, I loved watching him and he did improve.

I have a feeling in my water that Phil Tufnell might take over the JS role.......

Would love for that to happen, whether it will is another matter...

I'm not pre-judging anything, but it wouldn't surprise me if it turns out that Tufnell has been cast for the Sergeant 'amusing' lamoid role. If not him, I expect someone else will get the sympathy / anti-judge vote.

RTV is all about manipulation and past experience shows it doesn't have to be subtle...in fact the reverse if anything.

OMG Yes I wholeheartedly agree - When Kate Garraway stayed in week after week as well it was infuriating. The relief when they finally got voted out !

I think relief to THEM, as well!!!

After a while it becomes an exercise in the Public taking the P..ss!!

JJ

Just to be awkward

It might be worth hoping, as well, that the better dancers among the line up also have a personality that comes across well and that the voters actually engage with them and want to keep them in!

I found John Sergeant entertaining to begin with but he stayed in far too long. I hope the same thing doesn't happen this year.

At the risk of starting another argument about this issue...if the function of the public vote is merely to mirror the judges' assessment then there is little point in having it. Given that the public give their support for a wider variety of criteria than the judges do, it is almost inevitable that it won't, and therefore at least one less competent dancer is almost bound to outstay at least one more competent one.

Hmmm, I was thinking that too........

There will always be the rubbish one who out stays their welcome. It has happened every year. The difference last year was the media and some sections of the public going way OTT trying to defend poor defenceless John from the nasty judges.

Someone will last longer than the talent should dictate this year. Let's just hope the (over)reaction isn't the same.

And that includes the people in SCD Towers who, lets face it, took a fairly common event in the story arc of any viewer voter based programme, let alone Strictly itself, and whipped it up into a media frenzy. Which all helps with the ratings obviously

Claire once again we agree!

(I hope the 'poor defenceless John' bit was tongue in cheek!)

I would add that I really don't think Tuffers (or Lynda for that matter) will be as bad as JS anyway.

I voted to save Kate Garraway and John Sergeant week after week and don't regret doing so.

They brought some much needed fun and light-relief to the serious side of the competition for me - and it was my hard earned cash I was spending voting so it was up to me who I chose to vote for and for what reason.

At no point did I vote for either out of sympathy though. That would have been patronising.

I loved John Sergeant and looked forward to seeing him dance every week. I was gutted when he quit but I feel he was forced to do so.

The fiasco was created by the BBC. It invited someone that they expected would be hopeless and booted out early on to make up the numbers and satisfy those who wanted older dancers.

The problem for the BBC was people took him to their hearts and then Arlene and co started bitching him up in the media saying he should leave.

I voted for him because I genuinely enjoyed seeing him week after week. There was no sympathy involved.

But then we come back to the question: is this a serious dance show or a Saturday night entertainment show.

I'm with Sid. I pays my money and I expect my choice. I felt really let down by the BBC last year as it descended into total chaos.

I never found John Sergeant remotely entertaining. He wasn't funny-bad, he was boring, hurry-up-and-get-off bad.

Gary Rhodes was the only dancer last year who was bad in a hilarious way, and he was one of the first out.

I cringed watching Gary Rhodes. Everyone reacts differently to different people.

I did actually feel sorry for Gary Rhodes a little bit, having 2 fast, similar Latin dances for his first 2 outings. If he was bad at the Cha Cha Cha then you didn't need to be Len to work out the Jive was going to be a bit of a trainwreck, however, have to say it was his attitude that was actually even more off putting and I would guess a big part of his bottom 2 experience.

JS bored the pants off me. :yawn:

I was a fan of Gary Rhodes before he did SCD and the amount of time he had allocated to training for SDC was pitiful for someone with so little natural ability. I expected more of a commitment from him and felt he really let Karen Hardy down and their frustration showed. The knock on effect for me as a Karen fan was that she was out of the competition right at the start (I know it was the opposite for some ), where as if as so many celebs do, he'd turned down the offer because of pressure of work, then someone else more able to meet their obligation to the show could have been on instead.

I agree. I also don't think that he was charming or remotely charismatic. He just appeared arrogant and annoying to me.

The public vote has a role because the judges will indicate a range of people who have a claim to win. The function of the public vote as a whole is to make a choice of what they prefer within a responsible range and mindful that its a dancing show not a standup comedy audition or a beauty pageant. The judges give comments - like this one is technically best, this one acts it best, this one isn't quite as good but has improved most or even this one is good but should be better. The audience pick who they want and which relevant criteria they want to vote for. The judges usually reflect that too as the top dancers will get similar marks and who gets what and the comments may vary from week to week. As no one will be perfect in all respects and people will impress in different relevant ways there's plenty of role for the audience in deciding what looks best of the best to them.

The problem comes if the audience vote votes on completely different grounds for the funniest or the prettiest or the worst dancer or the one who has worked hard to become mediocre or on race, sex or past history . On top of that you have an anti-judge vote which votes solely for who the judges don't think is any good and a sympathy vote to save who ever is in danger without thinking that someone better will go.

It should be essentially the same as any competition with a task to be learnt. There's some people who can't do it, some who can do it very well and a debate about which of the people who do it best is the best. It shouldn't be about rewarding who is worst or who failed most spectacularly or who the examiner found attractive.

It was the other way around for me.

Gary was just cringeworthy and I couldn't wait to see the back of him.

I loved John's dry sense of humour and found him quite charming. The routines Kristina put together for him were wonderful.

I guess we all like different things. That's why it's nice to have couples that cater for everyone.

Until a rule-book is issued to viewers outlining what are and aren't acceptable reasons for voting for a couple, then we can vote for whatever reasons we like.

If you don't believe that voting for a couple because they are funny or attractive is acceptable, then you don't have to. But it's not up to one viewer to dictate how others should vote.