Chris and Craig are bland personified though. Phil and Ricky have an appeal but I doubt if its to most people. The problem is the voting audience votes for failure, dsilikes any negative comments however justified, is attracted to particular types of males and doesn't value merit.

They can't reveal the numbers/percentages of votes or the public rankings during the show because doing so would influence the way people vote and prevent people from placing bets on the outcome (e.g. if one or two couples were streets ahead of the others, then their supporters might get complacent and stop voting and the supporters of the other couples might not bother to vote at all)

I don't know why they don't make the figures public after a series has finished though.

Actually, I don't. One or two relative upsets (Martina Hingis, or Spoony, perhaps), but a potential finalist, certainly a quarter or semi-finalist on merit, no. It's like a football or cricket tournament: we might thoroughly enjoy watching Barcelona to lose at home to a team we have never heard of, Italy losing to Cameroon, or Australia to Canada in the group stages, but sneakily we really want the best teams to meet each other in the final stages. And I'm sure it's the same for Strictly: they actually want the best couples competing in the latter stages, which has really only happened in three series: 3, 4, and 6.

The problem with this series is that the new scoring system means that there is too little separation in the judges' scores, and hence the (frankly ludicrous) public choice has too much weight. It is always a bad idea to change rules owing to a one-off event (Dangerous Dogs Mess, er, sorry Act, or our ludicrous gun laws that prevent Olympic athletes from training in the country, but have no effect whatsoever on criminals anyone?), and they should have left well alone, or, at least, left it as it was last year until 2 dances came in, allowing for greater seperacy on the leader board.

Could someone briefly explain the new scoring system to me please? I know it's been explained elsewhere but I'd appreciate it..
I thought it was half judges votes/half viewer votes but is it different now? (I know it has something to do with last year where a couple tied for first place or something..?)

and Craig

I think the new scoring system deserves much of the blame.

To negate its effects, the judges need to stop creating ties. There were three ties this week, two of them above the bottom three.

Its all about who we want to win it

So the best couples didn't compete in the series 2 and 5 finals. Jill halfpenny and denise lewis were clearly the best in series 2 alesha dixon, gethin jones and matt di Angelo were the best of series 5. No series has seen the most entertaining dancer go home early in fact the most entertaining dancer has won each series and if it wasn't for the public vote that wouldn't have happened we'd have been stuck with denise lewis, zoe ball, emma bunton and rachel Stevens. Can you imagine that previous winners dance? I'm not sure I would have stayed awake during it!

there was a newspaper article this week about who is getting the most votes and that is Chris

Hollins, 38, has raked in the most votes in every show so far, despite his ordinary performances on the dance floor. Yet Chris and dance partner Ola Jordan, 27, are 33-1 outsiders.

Ex-cricketer Phil Tufnell, 43, is their only rival in the voting. A show source said: “Chris has two left feet but the public love him.”

The only thing that surprises me is that Ricky Groves isn't up there with them.

I take your point, but I was fairly careful in my post, and stand by it. In series 2, yes, the two best dancers got to the final, but the final also featured Julian Clary, hugely popular, but not, I would suggest, as good a dancer as Aled Jones. In series 5, while Matt probably reserved his best overall performance for the final, he should (i) have been gone when he gave up on his dance in the quarter final; (ii) was lucky to get to the final ahead of Gethin. In any case, in my view series 5 was for me ruined by the ludicrously early exit of Gabby Logan, which was almost as bad as what has just happened to Zoe, and not helped by Kelly Brook's untimely exit, so it's difficult to argue that the best dancers reached the final. Finally, Jill and Darren would have won series 2 on the judges' vote (74 points against 71 for Denise and Ian), while a final between Mark and Emma decided by the judges would simply have gone down to who danced the better on the day.

Sorry, but this manages to indulge in doom-mongering, hyperbole, lack of perspective and an undercurrent of elitism all at the same time. This is a Saturday night light entertainment zeleb reality TV show that relies on involving a broad audience of 8 million plus people in the entertainment. It's not an Oxbridge entrance exam.

It's got a daily spin-off show to plainly label the whole thing as entertainment rather than competitive sport. Every celeb that goes on it - and, despite your doom scenario, there's a queue of agents trying to get their 'celeb' clients on it and will be for however long it runs - have got to be perfectly aware it's as much about people liking you as how well you dance. Jeez, the show's been on long enough; they ought to know it. People will vote off, given the chance, the celebs they don't connect to, regardless of their dance abilities.

Given all that, the show's still almost always been won by the best dancer in the end. On the couple of occasions the person who might not have been objectively selected as the best dancer on paper won, the person who won instead of them could dance just fine too ... they just had a bit more personality for more people that swung it. If John Sergeant had made it to the final, I don't doubt even though he had support in the public vote all the way to get him there, the public would not have given him the trophy. Just the same as for other no-hopers folks have taken to finals. There's never been a two-left footer who's won the show and I doubt there ever will be. The public take the odd no-hoper to a final cos they entertain them in some way, whether I agree with that or not, other than just on clinical dance ability.

This year again, when Craig's gone - and he will pretty soon, I'm sure - all the two left-footers will be gone. So that'll be all the complete no-hopers gone earlier than almost all the other series there have been. So much for the Strictly's going to hell scenario.

None of the others left after that will be an embarrassment to watch. The public knows, no matter how it votes, they are only ever going to get rid of Ricky W or Ali if they both end up in dance-off against each other. And even given that judges' nightmare scenario, that'll still mean they'll make sure to take whichever one of them survives to the final through all subsequent dance-offs they might be in.

So we'll probably end up with a final that features (my guess):

1) Best technical dancer - Ricky W or Ali
2) Best improved dancer - Jade (who I think will end up better than Ali)
3) Best, in public's views, dance+personality character: Chris, Tuffers or Ricky G.

Could be one of the best balanced finals yet for this little light entertainment show. If we had to lose someone like Jade to a dance-off against judge's picks Ricky W or Ali along the way, I'd be personally sad to see it. But the final would still be pretty good.

If Ricky W and Ali don't meet in a dance-off, the judges will ensure both of them get to the final ... so then the public will be left with only one finalist of its choice and the judges two. Folks will then have to decide if they want their favourite personality or the most improved dancer as their only choice to make the final.

If, in the end, the public get to send only one person of their favourites to the final and they ultimately win ... so what? Whoever it is, they'll be another Darren Gough, not a John Sergeant. Might even do the show a bit of good and encourage some celebs that won't be the best dancer at the start that they do still have a chance to win ... cos contrary to your whole thesis, the best dancer does usually win, not the opposite.

I think I agree with you.....in the form of a GBP leaderboard?
If we have the Judges' one anyway what's wrong with showing the (paying) Voters' one?
They did under sufferance for last year's final - I don't think the World stopped turning - or did it?

Judges' LB - 10 couples marked 1-10 in descending order.
Voters' LB - 10 couples marked 1-10 in descending order.

It would stop conspiracy theories and that has to be a plus

So, just because the public vote created a situation that you did not agree with or like, it is the BBC who caused it in order to get their chosen lineup?

I would suggest that you sit up & take note of the fact that it was the PUBLIC who created the situation by voting FOR couples who were at the bottom of the leaderboard, and by so doing ensured that one good couple would have to go. They have done the same thing last year, and the year before that etc. etc. The competition/programme is actually poorer for the loss of one good dancer, just as it was last year, just as it was when Spoony went out before that.

So stop pointing the finger at the BBC, and begin pointing it at the public who are voting to keep bad dancers.

I also don't think Len should have the casting vote. If it's 2-2 they should revert to the public vote - like x-factor

Maybe there should be more than 15 minutes for the voting?

I think the unexpected results come from being asked to vote for who you want to stay, rather than who you want to go. For me personally, for example, Zoe seems a lovely lady, and maybe one of the better dancers, but nothing about her peformances makes her one of my favourites, they just don't grab me in that way, so whilst I wouldn't be voting for her if I were voting for someone to leave, I don't vote for her as my favourite either, as she's somewhere in the middle for me, just using her as an exmaple.

I agree with this. I think it completely unfair that couples below the tie get an extra point. It now means you rarely get anyone with 1 point, the bottom couple always seem to have about 4 points.

One way of solving this would be to do what they do in the Eurovision. If there is a tie then the country who was awarded the highest number of marks eg- 12's, 10's is placed higher. This wouldn't work if you had two couples with 28 points who all got 7's, but if the marks were 6, 7, 8, 7, then it would be the couple who were awarded the 8 who would be placed higher.

I don't think they can be bothered, anyway, "it's just telly" and they like the controversy, it's good for the ratings and that's all they care about.

It's not a matter of whether or not I agree with the combined results it's just that I would like to know how the combined result was achieved. We see the judges scores but not the scores of the public vote, why not?
As we know in the past the BBC has been hauled over the coals and fined for faking phone in votes in various competitions and so when I see them being secretive about the SCD public vote I am suspicious.
Of course BBC employees are always annoyed when people wish to know what goes on in the secretive, pampered world inside the Beeb, but I feel that if everything is genuine then let the paying public see.

Did you miss the statement every week that states that the phone votes have been independently verified? To that end, there is no secrecy at all. And if the votes were made public, what would it change? Very little apart from being likely to give boosts to those who the public could quite clearly see were getting low votes. It would not help anything in any way at all. Apart from that, it would help in no way at all.

As for the "fakery" before, after a wide-ranging review, extra safeguards & editorial controls were put in place, and do you really think that any producer would be stupid enough to try to rig anything inder those conditions? Why do you think that they are now very jumpy with respect to phone-ins? Why do you think that they nullified the voting last yea in that tie situation (and offered refunds to callers if required)?

And if the results were made known, who would disbelieve them anyway (especially if they told a story that some found difficult to accept)?

But of course, there is little that I, or anyone else, can say that is likely to satisfy those with a conspiracy theory to foster, or are simply suspicious by nature ........

I agree.I see no reason we cant see the results if not during the series then defiantly at the end like on XF

And if they did show us a list of voting numbers, would those who wish to read a conspiracy theory into everything actually believe them, or would they again feel they were being lied to if the result wasnt as they woould like it to be ?