There's a little Q&A with him In the Guardian Guide this week, where he answers "TV turn off?" by saying:


Link.

That would put the people on SCD in the other, "falseness" category, and since SCD is one of the most prominent examples of "TV on a Saturday night", and since Austin has been in SCD himself, it seems unlikely that he simply forgot Strictly and didn't mean to include it.

Hmmmmmm...........

So according to him Simon Cowell and X Factor (and maybe BGT) are real and not false?


A rather strange conclusion.

If his 'keeping it real' role model is Simon Cowell .. then I don't think we need to worry about his viewpoint further. Nothing so false and contrived as X Factor.

A bit unfair on Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman.

Lets see how many posts we get in before the name 'Lisa Snowdon' or the word 'robbed' appears.

It does appear he is referencing SCD with his response but surprised he would refer to the show in context to falseness.
Although he was by self admission very competitive during his time on the show which is understandable with his sporting background and bitterly disappointed on his exit, I never got any impression from him since that he may have issues with the show so im baffled as to what/who he was actually referring to with that response and if it indeed was actually Strictly Come Dancing he was pin pointing.
Hopefully some other posters may have some insight,

A bit ambiguous. Is he referring to the show, the pro dancers, the presenters? I'm pretty sure most have changed over the years, so the only thing the same is the presenter, Tess.

He wasn't known as 'The Leicester Lip' for nothing.

And the judges. He's always seemed a little bitter to me, albeit played off under jokiness. Although he did accept the pay-cheque for doing the tour so *shrug*.

Veiled references are at best- pointless and at worst- passive aggressive.

I think I'd rather have the loose cannon honesty of James Jordan than the cleverer but more snide comments of someone who should have moved on.

Its an interesting read. I especially like the bit about the Dragons.

Seems like he took his semi final binning off harder than some of his, ahem, "ardent" (which I believe is the polite word) supporters on here.

Far be it for me to cast aspersions on Mr Healey health, but just what sort of pain medication is he on after a career getting beaten to a pulp by men twice his size? And has anyone checked his dosage recently.

That can be the only excuse for an outburst calming Ant and Dec are 'genuine' on a Saturday night.

If he thinks Ant, Dec and that dreadful Cowell creature are genuine, then I'm relieved our nice little SCD isn't in the same category

I took the comments about Ant and Dec/Simon Cowell to mean that they were genuine In that they don't pretent to be something they are not - not that they are a shining beacon of honesty and integrity.

I have a sneaky feeling we will have a similar happening this year with Jake, if he is in the dance off with Frankie or Pixie he will be leaving, the male judges prefer the women, although most on the forum have him a cert for the final I'm not so sure.

*applause*

Pixie and Frankie are arguably better dancers. Jake is arguably more entertaining. It is for the judges to keep the better dancers and for the public to vote for the entertaining dancers. Jake can win by popular vote alone.

Austin was a far better dancer than Jake is, and Pixie and Frankie are both far better than Lisa was (all opinion obv) - I don't think it'd be the same situation at all.

My immediate reaction was to agree on both counts - but perhaps distance lends enchantment (or disenchantment in Lisa's case) to the view. I find it difficult to compare dancers from different series.

Who cares?

Give me strictly over anything with Ant&Dec or Simon Cowell on it.