Are you arguing that he would be more popular if he was one of the judges favourites?

He got at least 52% of the public vote, from a position of being 2nd out of 5 in the leaderboard (sayeth the Daily Star). The BBC have clearly done an exceptional job of pushing him forwards.

No.

Next conspiracy theory please ........ step right this way.

Er - no ... I'd say the public respond to who the celebs are - on and off the dancefloor.

I can't access the Star's website - work won't let me! ('Reason: nudity" ) So I have no idea what they're saying.

However, being as the judges clearly favour other celebs over Chris, I hardly think the BBC can be held responsible for that voting share. I think that's down to Chris and Ola themselves. Viewers do have minds of their own, you know ...

When we're allowed to have minds of our own.

Clearly the public relate in a big way to the hobbits. They can probably relate Chris's dancing in themselves as much as they may like the matching hoodies.

Or to mark down the better dancers. There seems to be a lot of pressure from forums to get them to do exactly that.

Source?

Also, "percent more" is ambiguous because it gets used in conflicting ways.

In any case, even a percentage doesn't tell us how popular a celeb is the with SCD viewers. Since there are only 15 minutes to vote, and we're not told how many votes are received, it's possible that a tiny minority of the viewers is deciding the result.

No there's pressure on the forums to mark the so-called better dancers more realistically.

Awarding someone a 10 when there are problems with their topline (as pointed out by James) and when they crashed into another couple (as pointed out by Flavia) doesn't sound very fair to me.

The BBC edit their VTs, they produce the It Takes Two segments about them, they give them airtime. Anybody who watches any edited reality tv show can tell you that if the producers wanted to tilt the show against them, they could have cut them off at the knees ages ago.

I'm not arguing (except in other places, for a laugh) that they're "producer favourites" or anything. (And I've said in other threads that their popularity is only helped by going above and beyond what the BBC provide them with storyline wise.) Just that the show has done better at tapping into their natural appeal than they have with other people. The fact that they're naturally very appealing goes a long way to explaining 53%+ out of 5, but it could never go the whole way.

Judges scores and "bias" aren't the be-all-and-end-all of the BBC anyway. Ricky Groves didn't get amazing judges scores the first few weeks. The show still tried to push him on us initially as the second coming of Jack Benny.

Is that why they are Hobbits!?

No - they've both got furry feet. Hadn't you noticed?

And I'm very suspicious about the ring that Chris keep turning over and over in his hand.