Laughable.

According to our Head Judge, if you turn up, move both legs and finish in time with the music, you deserve 4 points. Surely, Len, that would be the absolute minimum for one point, let alone four!

No wonder I agree with Craig far more often.

He really is irritating and has been for a long time. He thinks he's something special.
It's lucky for him this programme came along, otherwise he'd have disappeared off the face of the earth like others of his era. He won the British Championship in his twenties, once was it? that's forty years ago.
Any other major competitions?
Dance has come a long way since then and could manage, as could SCD, quite easily without him, but he won't think that.

I fast forwarded through it.

Len on ITT is sometimes good, but more often than not, totally cringeworthy.

I have to agree. He thinks he is the star of the show.

Someone mentioned PANTO and I thought, YES, that's just what he's become, and the rest of the judges are not far behind..

What role would you see him him in???

At least we know now why he overmarks so many times, if you can get a 4 for not much at all, if you do the dance OK, you're guaranteed to score well with Len.

He forgot to add the bit about how being his favourite is always worth a mark or two. Or how scores can be used to adjust the bigger picture......

I'd always assumed if Craig gives a particularly low score, Len gives a much higher score so the average of the 2 scores is a proper reflection of the performance.

according to the Len scale, you can get 4 wihout any training at all.
No wonder we never get to the poor 1-4 paddles

I think he should be replaced by a proper judge. Karen Hardy springs to mind.

Surely, it was meant as a bit tongue in cheeck, not to be his considered serious opinion.
Thats just Len

I really liked it and for the first time understood exactly why he marks the way he does.

Giving the beginners marks for showing up etc. is not silly - it is how he can provide encouragement to those who are struggling and nervous at the start. He can then expect them to develop more skills and so earn more marks.

Tongue in check - I thought so too.

I thought this too. I think he probably does it like this because he knows how hard it is and how hard they work.

To be honest I have no particular problem with how any of the judges put together their marking criteria as long as whatever criteria they use is consitent and fair to all couples.

I agree. Only a few days ago on ITT, when he was defending Laila's 7 for her aborted rumba, he basically said he just compares each dance with the others on the night, and moves 1 point up or down comparatively. Now he directly contradicts that by saying there's a definitive over-arching scale he uses, irrespective of what other dances have scored.

It's all so much waffle. People expecting a straight answer as to why the judges score as they do shouldn't hold their breath, because they're not getting one, because there isn't one.

I understand that it can look like that, but the judges have to register their score immediately after the dance on a small score-keypad so the announcer can read out the scores.

They can't change/adjust their score afterwards.

I totally agree

I wondered if this exercise was intended by the BBC as an attempt to rescue the tattered judging panel and try to regain some credibility for them.

If it was, I'm not sure it succeeded. It came across as somewhat self-aggrandising on the part of Len. But then he always does come across as smug and self-loving on that programme. There has been a lot of him on lately. Is he just being used as a filler when they are short of material or ideas?

AS long as they dont do an Alesha scoring criteria

But after 7 series of working with him, Len can probably guess roughly how Craig is going to score a dance (he certainly seems the most predictable to me, anyway), and so he could still account for it in his scoring.

Heaven forbid.

Yes, fairly. The question is why Len thinks that scoring fairly is wrong.

Tongue in cheek or not, he just monopolises sections of a 30 minute show, it would be better if he just acted the stooge as he does for Claudia's daft dance antics.
I find that funny as I'm sure she does it to take the **** out of him.

Just a quickie but I'm guessing Len is actually a qualified competitive ballroom judge?

Yes, but he clearly doesn't mark as one on SCD cos it is light entertainment so why is he there? If he marked like he would professionally but still offered sympathy to the duds that would be OK but he continually overmarks them and encourages the audience to believe that mediocre is good. Then he moans and complains when they vote the same way he marks ie sentimentally.

I too thought his scoring criteria was ridiculous. Its a shame Len has to play the nice judge on strictly on DWTS he's much more fair and balanced,