I couldn't believe what I was watching last night when Caroline and Pasha did their last year's winners' dance. She was awful! Obviously hadn't been much in practice over the last few weeks. I know she has been busy with X Factor but you would think that she would have wanted to dance well on her last Strictly dance.

She really was awful. ...especially for a strictly champion.
Maybe she didn't get enough time to rehearse ; still that's no excuse.

Worst champion's dance since they have started this tradition. I remember how phenomenal Louis and Abbey's return dances were.

I agree, I couldn't believe I voted for them last year !!

Abbey and Louis had a waltz and a charleston though - I reckon they're a lot easier to get back into after 9 months without much rehearsal, whereas salsa seems way more complicated. And with Caroline's schedule, I doubt they got much rehearsal time at all.

(I did laugh at how much they had to slow the tempo down compared to last time)

Caroline didn't look very fit either. At first I thought she was pregnant. She seems to have put on weight around her middle.

Ouch. Caroline is gorgeous. She just looked out of practice.

In fairness she just looked out of practice. It's a shame they didn't do their Charleston but I doubt it was their choice. They were very worthy winners last year.

She was Strictly Awful.

Seconded.

Looked like a first week effort, wooden, stiff and awkward.

She didn't dance with Pasha on the Tour either, so she danced actually more with Tristan than she actually did with Pasha.

If she was relying on "muscle memory" then having a different partner will definitely not have helped, plus (if she did that dance on the Tour - ( I did not go so have no idea) then the choreography would have been changed for the bigger arenas.

Caroline has also been busy with Love Island as well as doing the X-Factor.

Not that I have ever watched Love Island as it is not my sort of television programme.

She wasn't rehearsed enough. If I was her I would have declined to dance. The whole thing looked akward and her dress was really unflattering as well.

I think it just shows that during Strictly, they can get to a higher level by the end of the show, but that level can easily drop (maybe a lot) with time.

Darren Gough went on a program and danced.

Very mediocre not good but better than what I could do

I liked her enthusiasm and the good advice she gave but kept on thinking:

it should have been Pixie!

Agree with the general consensus, she performed very badly - Pasha looked as though he was helping a week one contestant to get through 90 seconds.
Think she should have either done some training or declined to perform.

Very under rehearsed, obviously spending more time on X factor

my first thought was she hasn't been dancing since her win... but i still enjoyed it, bringing back memories of last year although i think i was backing someone else then

It felt strange seeing her on the show given that she's now in a ratings war with it - am surprised she was allowed and willing to do it. I actually imagined a speech bubble coming from Tess and Pasha telling her to s*d off back to The X Factor lol. Pasha even made a quip about that's how Strictly is when she was saying how the show affected her. I have nothing against Caroline and she was a great winner but I wonder if she is feeling awkward about having returned to the more succesful show whilst she is now associated to the less succesful.

They should have performed one of the two numbers she did on the tour, twenty something times, in January - either the Charleston to Istanbul or the American Smooth to Mack the Knife.

I thought the dance was inspirational. "Look, you can get away with this and they won't laugh at you!"
No point intimidating teh beginnerz with actually good dancing.

Is Caroline pregnant?

I gave her a Len 7.

It made me realise just how much she'd improved over the course of last series and I probably didn't give her enough credit for that at the time (I'd sort of formed the impression in my mind that she was a secret ringer for whom it was pretty effortless).