About Kara and Artem's dancing - they seem to fit together very well. Their style of dancing were a perfect match.

Tru dat. Probably one of the best matches ever on SCD. Maybe the best since Jill and Darren? I can't think of another couple so well matched in style and personality...

Chris and Ola?

Very difficult to notice a lack of something, haha, that's just the point ! It was difficult not to notice the extensive coverage in the press leading up to the semi & final for Matt and Pamela (e.g. both had front cover & dps in the Saturday's Mail) - contrasted with very little mention of Kara. Easily quantifed.

It doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree about the disproportion of exposure - what is important, imho, is that it did not have any impact on the outcome.

Well, it kind of does matter if you're using that assumption as the basis of your claim that it had no effect on the outcome.

Kara & Artem won on merit simple as...having found each other & become potential lovers is a bonus.

Aha, but it's not an assumption, it's an observation. And it really doesn't matter to me whether you failed to notice what I saw with my own eyes.

Oh, grand, you'll be able to provide some evidence then!

NB one newspaper is not sufficient.

Pamela had a regular column in the Guardian.

Hahahahahahaha, who do you think you are, hahahaha ?
For the last time, your opinion/view/assumption/lack of observation does not matter a jot to me. Bored with your pomposity now. End of dialogue. Hahahahahahahaha

Thanks, Old Lady, - knew I hadn't been seeing things

BLIMEY! how childish!

Mistress was "discussing" as befits a forum - your posts are talking AT people. I'd say your posts are the most pompous!

Was just about to remark on the pomposity of starting threads trying to imply that Kara and Artem were some kind of tragically overlooked underdogs who triumphed against all the odds. Ridiculous.

OK, I'm a geek.

Google news hits for the week 11th to 18th December gives:

Kara 475
Pamela 563
Matt 1760

I read in one interview somewhere that Kara was worried that the initial spark between them was being doused by all the hard training and she was worried about reigniting it.

However her interview on Breakfast TV after the show presented a young lady perfectly in control of her feelings, which to me disproves every single tabloid story.

I think the two of them are now excellent friends and should be allowed time to celebrate their well-deserved victory (people voted on the whole series, I think, not just on the final dances). they will proabably stay in touch, but Artem's mother's statements must have been the result of lots of media probing.

I thought he just wanted to keep the beer and the schnapps apart so that they wouldn't be distracted from their intention of doing well in the competition...

I think Kara won not only because of her dancing, but because of her personality. Whatever the rumours, I felt there was complete honesty on her part - she wasn't afraid to say how she felt. She just seems to be one of those rare people that underneath it all is such a kind person, so that even when she ended up completely exposed and vulnerable on TV, people still loved her. The celebration when they won says it all - look at the faces of Scott, Jimi, Kristina, Goldie, Tina, Felicity etc. She just got people on her side, and when she won it probably felt like they did too.

Hang on a minute, even you must admit that it added an edge to their Rumba which they repeated immediately, knowing that Matt & Pamela could never appear to be so convincing. Were we watching the same programme ?

It obviously makes the rumba less awkward if you are in wuv with your dance partner, but the reason they repeated it in the final was not because it gave them an edge. They had no choice. Their two highest scored dances were the Rumba and the Viennese Walz, both of them performed in the semi finals, so inevitably they would repeat a dance from the semis. Rumba was a good choice because they had the Walz in the final, and they chose the AS as favourite dance, so in order to balance things up it made more sense to choose the latin of their highest scored dances, although to be honest, even if they chose the VW, it would still have been smashing.

Excellent post! Other great Strictly platonic relationships would be Alesha and Matthew, and Ian with any of his partners. I think that's one reason I miss Ian so much - he seemed able to connect with his partners in a way no other pro dancer has been able to match, well at least not consistently.

I admit to being shamelessly in love with the whole Kara and Artem romance. I don't much care if it's all manipulative hype - I'm enjoying it in much the same way I might enjoy a rom-com film or chick-lit book. And it has just about as much impact on my life!

I'm sure their attraction to each other was reflected in their dances; that gorgeous rumba was extraordinarily sensuous and very moving and is my favourite dance of the whole series. Yet, for me, Ali and Brian didn't connect in the same way on the dance-floor, even though they clearly connected off it, so it's not enough to be romantically involved with your partner - you need to be able to express that in the dance.

Simple really .. they won because they were the best and fully deserved it!

It's still a bloody disgrace that the best ever dancer on Strictly was never awarded full marks for not one of her brilliant performances. The judges should hang their heads in shame.

KH herself said they were undermarked throughout!

Mistress wanted hard evidence, but even though Muggsy provided it shortly after (see below), no one it seems, not even Mistress, has wanted to discuss it


I think we can all agree this does back up at least half the OP's claim. I.e. Matt got masses more media attention than Kara but he also got 3 times as much as Pamela who received slightly more than Kara.

Think the fact Kara & Artem were holding off on the relationship added frisson to their rumba. Also why Ali & Brian's dancing suffered, simply because they had become intimate.

Easier to act out something you are hoping to do, than act out something you have done by dancing in public.

Did you search on the full names or just first name? "Kara" is a very unusual name whereas there must be plenty of "Matt" in the news and quite a number of "Pamela".

Would imagine it would have to be Matt Baker or the search would throw up millions of hits.

Replicated the search (date range & News) and actually got 644 hits for Pamela Stephenson, 1720 for Matt Baker & 587 for Kara Tointon. As this is specifically a news search full names for all is fair as News items will use full names.

So safe to say Matt was getting the most news coverage in the week up to the final.

Bear in mind that there were, at that time, 3 or 4 Matt Bakers in the news - a US House representative who was putting forward a bill, the chap who killed his wife and a footballer. On the search I just did for the week before, and weeding out the non-SCD Matt Baker's, all 3 contestants got about 800 mentions - mostly all in the same articles talking generically about the Strictly final.

And just on a personal observation level: As a Matt fan, I would have been delighted with additional media about him, but all we actually got separate was one additional radio interview with a North-east station (although it was worth it to hear him say that it was funny to see Anton 'wiping the floor with Ann' each week). We recorded everything with Matt in on the AT as you may expect, and looking through it, the overwhelming majority of coverage was of the 3 finalists together.

I would agree that over the course of Strictly, he probably did have more coverage but a lot of that was to do with his day job(s) as well, as the One Show thing blew up in the middle of it, which was hardly his fault.