Has anybody else noticed them?? Saw Darcey pressing a few buttons on it on camera shot... They're in front/at the side of all the judges. They look like calculators anybody know what they are? What they do?

inputting their scores so they can be seen by the viewer watching at home when the couples are up in the Claudatorium

I thought it was kinda obvious what they were doing!

They release the hounds.

They control Tessbot.

I thought the production team would have done that on a computer graphic to be honest...

And in order to do that the production team would need to know what the judges' scores are...

Surely the main reason for them is so they can mark fairly immediately after the couples finish their dance and not be influenced by the other judges .

In Robin Windsor's short lived, off the cuff interview he said the judges voted electronically (presumably with these buttons) a few seconds before the dance finished. This gave time for the technicians to do whatever was necessary with the scores. If the couple fell over in a heap in the final second it supposedly wouldn't change the score.

I think they are calculating how long till the end of the show.

The paddles they hold up are just for show, confirming what their scores are.

If they hate the dance enough they can open a trap door to a bear pit with those keypads

Interesting. This could explain some of the alleged comment/score apparent mismatches if a glaring error happens at the last moment.

Oh I would love that.

The buttons control the electric shocks to the audience's chairs

'They're on their feet! (Because we just shot 4000 volts up their arses)'

If you watch Kirsty and Brendan's Salsa here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6zKlf_JMIQ) you can see the judges put their scores in after the dance is over.

That's a bit cruel, is it not?

When i was there the other week i was sat right behind the judges and they all pressed after the dance had finished . I don't know if this has changed from when Robin was talking about but certainly now every dance was the same.

I just knew someone would say that when I was typing it up

Is it either-
a) they order chinese takeaways. Bruno's favourite is no.59, crispy duck
b) 4 unlock codes have to be entered simultaneously to release the trapdoor. Russell Grunt had a near-miss when Len put in his date of birth instead.

Actually they are random sound bite generators. All the judges have to do is enter a random selection of numbers to come up with a completely unique soundbite which they can deliver as their judgement.

You press the hash key for Diz ah stah or Fab u loss though.

you know, I actually suspected the keypads are not keypads but plugs, and send the comments up the judges' arms instead, with patent BBC 'silly' current (IC/DON'TC)

Actually it's a BBC money saving exercise, in between watching dances and judging, they have to use the key pads to answer customer calls which come through hidden earpieces.

That never made sense to me, if they need a few seconds Tess and Clade can waffle enough. Why on earth would they vote before the dance had ended. Thank you for confirming it is tosh

I think they upgraded. It used to be a person collecting their scores on paper and rushing to the HQ with them. Now they have enough time to press the scores after the dance. Somebody WILL complain they are wasting money