I meant earlier on, as Monkseal said. If you read my earlier post I said that the actual collision was all Brian's fault. What Monkseal was asking, I thought, was right before Brian did his insane detour through the centre it looked like Brian and Ali and Ricky and Natalie were heading for a collision. Had that happened, I would have said Ricky was slightly at fault for veering off course and cutting the corner, making it more difficult for Brian to overtake. Brian still would have been mostly at fault though, as the onus would have been on him to slow down.

I think the judges may have missed it. Watching the rerun the other day, I could see the judges in the darkness, Len faffing about with a piece of paper and Bruno standing up leaning over Alesha's shoulder - at that point they seemed to be more concerned with getting the scores than watching the dance.

Admittedly that was only one small part of the action but, in a competition dance, I can't imagine there's that pressure on the judges to get the scores together double quick like there was on Saturday.

Why not a 10?

Where do people get the obviously false idea that an SCD 10 means no mistakes?

SCD simply does not use a marking system in which a couple starts with an imaginary total & then there are mandatory point deductions for every flaw. FFS if SCD did work like that, no one would get above 6.

I am sick of these absurd complaints about 10s.

All 10 means in SCD is that the judge thought the dance was enough better than dances that judge gave lower marks.

In pro comps the judges don't have to deicide on marks together, they just write their own preferred order down during the dance and then hand their sheet in at the end.

Ok, yes I remember seeing that bit and thinking it looked awkward.


Ive just rewatched it for the 10980580275th time and to me, it looks like Ricky is doing a fleckerl kind of off centre because there are other couples doing them right in the middle and Ali and Brian are going round them. Ricky and Natalie come out of the fleckerl with Ricky doing natural turns whilst Ali and Brian are out of their eyeline so Ricky doesnt realise this. I dont think they crash at all, Ricky and Natalie overtake them a little bit but instead of following them around the floor, which they could have done because Ricky and Natalie - what with them being such a tall couple- were covering more of the floor at a faster speed than the others so there was enough room to do so. I dont understand at all why Brian decided to take a quick detour because that could have well been avoided.

We all know that Len in particular is happy to dole out tens even when celebs make mistakes.

However, in the instance of the group VW, we were explicitly told by Flavia on ITT that any couples that initiated collisions would be penalised. Then Ali and Brian are awarded a ten.

So the complaints are less absurd than you may think.

In the meantime, don't stress. Mix yourself a cocktail!

I'd like to see Flavia tackle this - but Claudia should have tackled the judges about the collision and why they saw fit to give ALi a 10 when she should have been penalised

And also perhaps it is a question that Claudia should put to Brian about how he steered into Ricky and Anton

I'm not trying to rationalise the 10 here, but more trying to work out why it happened - I certainly don't think a single ten should have been awarded all night.

The only thing I can think of is that in the judges' own opinion - whether or not you believe it to be true opinion or biased - they'd ranked the couples Ali, Ricky, Laila, Chris/Natalie. If they'd got to that point, I'm not sure how much it matters whether they start with Ali on 10 or Ali on 5. Perhaps in the interest of providing the kindest marks to everyone, they started with the couple they believed to be the best in the highest possible position - 10. If they were to keep their hierarchy and then mark down on the collisions, then we could have seen Chris and Natalie on 6 - or even 5!