I'm telling you, polar expeditions have been undertaken with less determination.

I dunno if it was because she's now out of the training room, but I've never seen her so happy and huggy. I guess we forget the absolute mountain of pressure they feel under to get their pro to the final for all their protestations about it being all about the celeb.

At least Katie is not even trying and is just its all about Anton. 🙄😂

Oh, I seriously unappreciated Jake last year! Lovely bloke, but his dancing was bobbins!

Now there really was a bloke who lasted almost an entire series on one "great" dance (which was principally Janette defying gravity).

I'm ex-pat Yorkshire having lived in Wales for over 40yrs, I've met posh Welsh with no Welsh accent and posh Welsh who are emphatically Welsh. (and vice versa).

I do think Janette could have done about 95% of that without him being there at all, even the insane backbend/drop thingy.

Mental back bend bit and Jake wiggling his bum al la Matt Dawson that was it. He really wasn't much cop, a decent sense of rhythm and little else. Rewatched his jive recently, it was awful

I never thought I'd see those words used in the same sentence .......... posh and Welsh

No need to

You are not the only one

St Anita of the Virgin Dance Shoe.

Have I got this right?
Jay does jive = cop out because he's just pandering to public demand, not pushing himself and so has lost this vote.
Jay doesn't do jive = cop out, because he's obviously bottled it and is a fraidy cat and so has lost this vote.

Pretty much.

Someone worked it out, she had, over the months of Strictly, the equivalent of about 5 years worth of weekly dance lessons, now Strictly is a different beast obviously, and at a far faster pace etc, and she had outside commitments and much greater pressure, but the 'never danced before' does wear a wee bit thin.

Nevermind, she'll be back doing what I like her doing, and hopefully successfully as she's a damn good reporter/presenter and generally I like her.

Spot on maybe I'm being too confident but even without doing the Jive he will still win.

I think the thing that annoyed me most about the whole thing - and they showed this on ITT - was her saying "I'm starting from scratch every week". Well, no, you shouldn't be.

If Gleb failed to instill any ability to retain foundational moves that go from one dance to another then he did an appalling job as a teacher. Most people on Strictly comment on how it gets a bit easier as they go because they get a better understanding from earlier dances.

I'm sure she had the pre-nup locked in by then, I have faith in her.


Yes I remember Sophie repeatedly being criticised for picking her charleston again in the final. She became a forum pariah. It's probably why she finished 4th.

She struck me as someone who wanted to win rather than just participate for the joy of it. She (and her fanz) also over-played the 'beginner' card a bit too much for my liking. That can only wash for so long as the playing field becomes more level the further into it you go. After 3 months of daily tuition she ain't no beginner.

The comments attributed to her since she was eliminated make her sound like a sore loser.

There is no doubt she gained a lot of fans but one (wo)man's meat is another (wo)man's poison. As Andy Townsend would say "Not for me Clive"

Anita is a brilliant saleswoman.

Her dance technique was poor to non-existent, but she sold every dance on performance.

She sold herself as the sleb who'd never danced before. She might as well have commissioned her own jingle to be played over every appearance.

She's the one who sold Gleb's self-indulgent choreography which mainly pandered to his own vanity as 'innovative' and 'risk-taking'.

And enough people bought to get her to the semi final.

But I think she was. Gleb didn't seem to explain the basis of the dance or how they crossed over into other dances, he just taught her steps like a gymnastic floor routine.

I think all of them would be able to do a passable waltz at a wedding except Anita who could probably only do her "Maleficent waltz" this was made even more obvious from her goodbye dance where she did what all of us could already do, sway awkwardly from side to side.

My wife's Welsh. Went to Public School too.
Now THATS posh.

Bloomin' heck, that is posh! I went to the local comp

I now live in a place, Kent, that has grammar schools and it goes against all my Welsh, anti-elitist roots

Or like Louis who years afterwards knew the basic steps of the dances the week he was on ITT. Even though he ballses up his jive, he still knew what it should be.

That's one of the things I appreciated about growing up in Wales; we all went to the local school, my friends were the sons of landowners, farmers, working class kids like me and even Laura Ashley's children. It wasn't until I was 18 that I met the one person of my age group who had gone to private (boarding) school and he seemed to be a rather lonely and eccentric individual.

My FIL is Scots and very posh. (He's great though, we get on like a house on fire for all my common roots ). You look at him and OH and wouldn't think they were related.

Unappreciating K&K's American Smooth....and I don't know why. It's pure Hollywood, glitz and glamour, and exactly what Strictly is about. I should love it, but I don't and I don't know why. Was it Kellie's dress? *muses*

I feel emotionally blackmailed by it, not in a "right, that's it, I'm writing to my MP" way, just that the whole performance is tied up in the whole "Kellie never got to wear pretty frocks like everyone else" storyline. Well that was Kevin's fault, not wardrobe's and he's exploited people's sympathies over something HE CHOSE TO DO.

I don't like feeling like my emotions are being deliberately exploited to gain sympathy and that's how I feel when I look at it. Plus Kevin is VERY ORANGE and looks like he's wearing his dad's tails.

I look at it and rather than feeling "awww" I just go "meh, is that the best you can do to make me cry, Kevin?"