I thought her leaving speech was very nice and understated, showing none of the arrogance and nastiness that Ann has been accused of on here.

It is also testament to her that eliminated contestants have spoken of her very highly indeed (especially Patsy, Tina and Michelle).

I would agree but stand by for the torrent who will not agree..............

Yes, I agree. She was a good sport throughout.

No, I think she guessed her moment had come and she was indeed gracious in defeat. Anton less well prepared with one liners, but we can now let the bitching drop, I feel.

I thought she was very gracious.

Of course she was, she has better manners than some of her detractors.

She enjoyed herself on the show, so good for her.

Deleted as wrong thread......

Can you tell me what she said? I'm afraid in our house we missed it as we were already on our third glass of bubbly.

Ann has always been a good sport despite all the nastyness aimed at her.

Her closing speech was better than I expected but she isn't the nice kind cuddly person some of you think she is.

I do not think of her as nice and cuddly- who on earth is?

I do think she is a kind woman, there have been lots of tributes to her generosity in the media recently.

I only felt it right that this was discussed on here following some of the incredibly nasty and increasingly desperate threads I have read on here about Ann.

I am under no illusions about Ann.
She made a very gracious exit.

Yes she was very gracious but I wouldnt really have expected anything different to be honest.

Nor is she the horrible person others seem to think she is. While much has been made of her political views which are unpalatable to many people, and I don't agree with many of her political views myself, I do think she deserves respect for being one of the MPs more deserving of being called right honourable. She has been considered even by her opponents as one of the better MPs in terms of representing her constituency members, and was completely clean in the expenses scandal.

She is a politician ,Enough said .

Ah, so you know her personally do you? Fair enough.


Is it honorable to undertake a job, knowing that you're only going to take less than half of the requirements for that job seriously?

She's a seasoned politician, I expect no less.

Never met the woman, but I'm not convinced anyone could be as horrible a person as some have made her out to be on this forum.


Like everyone else, Ann knew Strictly signed her to be the comedy character of the series, so I think she took the requirements every bit as seriously as was expected of her by her employers.

I'm not a fan but I have to admit she was gracious in defeat.

Ah, I see. It's just that the statement you made was "Nor is she the horrible person others seem to think she is.", rather than "I'm not convinced she's as horrible as others say".

You can, I hope see the difference between those two statements.


But is it honourable to accept such an advantage over the other contestants?

I think she did brilliantly to get as far as she did but when she went was probably about right.....

Whilst I do see the difference between the two statements and accept that the second may be more accurate, if you were to look my the statement in the context of what I replied to, "but she isn't the nice kind cuddly person some of you think she is.", then you can see that I deliberately used the wording I did rather than something like "I'm not convinced ..." to copy the way that person stated what they said about Ann as a fact.

You can, I hope, see the hypocrisy of you picking up on my statement but not the statement I was responding to.


I wouldn't say she accepted an advantage. Despite many people's fears, she was never going to win. She just added a different element to the show which some loved and some hated.

She was 10 weeks late in giving her departure speech.

I heard she was up till all hours of the night working on the speech.

I agree with you. If she had reached the final and knocked out a potential winner*, I would have been outraged, but thankfully that didn't happen. I'm not a fan either, but she brought a lot of publicity to the show when she was there and seemed to have made a lot of friends in the Strictly family - which is good enough for me.

Time to put the pitchforks away and enjoy the excellent contestants that are left.

* Jimi, Patsy and Felicity would maybe have gone further in previous years, but I don't think any of them would have won the whole thing.