In all the hullabaloo about Dave, week after week, it seems to have been completely over looked that Fiona & Anton seem to be managing to keep their backsides free from the stickiness of the dance off.

Can anyone explain their attraction to me

I suppose Anton has his supporters and she's a nice lady - and in fairness and I say this as a Mark supporter she was better than both Mark and Dave this week. Her paso wasn't dreadful just utterly pedestrian. The weeks were she has been dreadful enough to warrant a place in the bottom two I think she's been bouyed by sympathy for older ladies,the knowledge she can do better with the right dance, being obviously in need of the votes and equally dreadful dancers being less likeable and having less potential.

I would lay money on her being in the DO for Blackpool though - I think her days are seriously numbered.

i expect Mark will now get Dave's votes so Fiona may well be in the DO next week

I think we should remember that Fiona is fifty-seven and like many women of that age and physique, she probably finds it now more difficult to "bend in the middle."
I can forgive her lack of exuberance on the dance floor at her age. She was never going to be more than "another contestant." I find her quite a pleasant person, not "showy" in the least.

Fitness is as important as age if not more so. Though Fiona has some experience of dance and lives in the countryside she has been focused on a career in property development in recent years probably not done anything desperately exerting for quite some time.

I think her dance on Saturday showed a marked improvement on her previous dithery and nervous performances. I am also convinced her skirt should have come off at some point - it was clearly designed to - so we didn't get to see the planned dance.
I think she comes over as a lovely fun lady who is improving every week. She is enjoying herself and I believe is only in the show for that reason and not to promote any other venture. I give her a vote or two every week - but don't realistically expect her to survive more than another week or two.
Whenever she goes I have enjoyed watching her and think she should be proud of herself.

I started quite liking her. Now I am just bored. Antons is mainly the reason. He DOESN'T CARE.

How do you know this?

I don't. Obviously I surmised. And you know otherwise?

I have been wondering exactly this myself for quite a few weeks!

Fiona, like Mark, is another contestant I think the producers felt would disappear a lot quicker than she has done. I originally put it down to Anton's purported fanbase, but ever since her table-trailing rumba I've been wondering how she's avoided the DO. Theories:

1) She's getting away with it by being eminently forgettable, whereas most of the other DO candidates have done something spectacularly awful to land themselves in there.

2) She's been on tied scores for a few of the weeks, which has probably helped to boost her up the points ladder a bit when voting time comes around.

3) She's managed a reasonably helpful distribution of dances. The meh waltz after the dodgy CCC, then the OK QS after the even dodgier rumba (yes, I know they scored the same, pedants ), while others have come to grief in the scheduling. Getting the dodgy paso in on the week of a bald wig and a truckload of tartan was serendipitous

4) There's still a hard core waiting for her to come good. I actually thought her tango and cha-cha were relatively promising and have been disappointed to see virtually nothing else good from her, apart from the fairly enjoyable QS. Perhaps there are a few more still holding their breath.

She's a nice, fun lady and a great actress in her day as well as being very beautiful. Anton has his supporters and he is making a real effort this year. It's nice to see him still in the competition with someone who can dance and not being the comedy couple.

They are good fun together and certainly better than a man who can't dance getting his tits out and an overweight actor who has some talent but who by no means is better than her or more entertaining.

I quite liked their Paso this week and I hope they stay in for a few more weeks to come though it will be increasingly difficult for them. I certainly hope she stays in longer than Mark or Ben.

Hope this helps.

No one knows for a fact but it seems that no matter what he does people on here will slag him off.

He seems to be making a real effort this year and it would be nice to see people acknowledge that.

Well he seems to you. But that goes without saying, we are all surmising, aren't we? So take what I or other people wrote with a large spoonful of salt. We wouldn't really know exactly what went through their minds. Having said that, if doing those tra-la-la latin was making an effort, then I think Anton is nigh to hopeless.

As far as the statement that he doesn't care goes I doubt you could give an example of a dance this series that was any more carefully choreographed with a celebrity partner in mind than the QS they did immediately after the rumba.

She was having difficulty remembering routines all through so there were places for her to gather herself and it worked well.

If you take the rumba out of it they show a steady upward progression in terms of the sureness of performance even if this is not always reflected in the scoring, but then the scoring is bizarre, Craig for example scored the paso the same as the rumba I think.

I think she is improving more than Ben or Mark, and is now doing more dancing than either, plus the fact that she's never actually been in the bottom two apart from the rumba week.

She'll go in the next two or three weeks I am sure, hopefully after they get a chance to do a foxtrot, and I reckon they both will have done very well to achieve that.

I think I can agree she's improving, but for me her routines are forgettable, Her quickstep, though choreographed with her in mind, was a little start and stop. Also, I think she's slightly better than Ben but on par with Mark, but Mark, being a direct comparison to her because he's also an actor, at least remembers his routines, so Mark is more superior than her.

I have not enjoyed the Fiona/Anton partnership and find them insipid as a pair. She's another who might have fared better with a different partner because the routines they are doing are dull or sickly, or both. I find it hard to understand how they've avoided a DO so have no answer, or theory, for the OP.

In fairness to her she did make real efforts to master the lines and movement of a paso, so kudos to her for that. With a better routine perhaps this would have been a memorable dance from her.

We had a little chat about this on the spoiler thread, as I too was initially surprised.

If you break down the individual dances and weeks, though, it's not so surprising as to why she's survived. Also, she's probably only just about kept safe in the past three weeks.

Fair points. I think the stop start nature of the quickstep was thought out carefully and deserves credit for working.

Not wishing to tempt fate but a lot the problems before (even in the rumba where she was stepping off on the wrong foot and got out) came from not remembering the routines as you say and they (or he) had to find a way to get her over that hurdle. Lately she has not forgotten the steps and that is improvement.

I would throw in that I do now think they,of the obvious bottom 3 have the highest possibility of delivering a really excellent dance in one of the two ballroom numbers they have left.

I think she's gorgeous and I'm enjoying her on the show.

I have to say. I am the same age as Fiona. I wish I looked like her

Apart from the rumba their non-ballroom routines have been fine. It's not the world professional latin championships, it's just a pro-celebrity reality t.v. show based around ballroom dancing.

I like her personality and her dancing is OK. She's definitely better than Ben (which wouldn't be hard) and Mark. Her Latin isn't really worse than Abbey's or Sophie's either.

I just wondered if you knew him and so knew more about him than others.

No I don't know him personally. But I can see he's not a very inspiring pro to his partners and not a very good latin dancer/teacher.