For me the most important thing is that the best and most entertaining dancers get to the final & the final 3 if possible. After that there is no more to see & no matter who actually wins the glitterball, the pleasure comes from the entertainment value of the performances over 3 months. So does it matter in the grand scheme of Strictly whether the winner is Jay or Georgia (or even Kellie, though I am discounting Katie's chances)?

If you put on a show that included past winners, excellent as most of them are, you would have to include Darren Gough, Chris Hollins & Natasha Kaplinsky. If he were in a show of beaten finalists or even some non finalists, I would be happy to pay to see Jay performing with

Colin Jackson
Rachel Stevens
Matt Baker
Frankie Bridge
Pixie Lott
Natalie Gumede
Austin Healey
Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Reserves
Mattt Di Angelo
Gethin Jones
Kelly Brook

Apart from joining the Strictly Tour, the only past winners who have benefited afterwards are Alesha Dixon & Tom Chambers, who toured in Top Hat.

This is one competition where I think travelling hopefully is more important than the destination

What about Zoe Ball, Denise Lewis, Ricky Whittle...?

I agree , and Denise Lewis was actually my favourite over Jill but the list of top class performers who missed out could get very long depending on your point of view - which somewhat proves the point that not winning the final vote in a popularity contest says little about your dancing ability.

If Jay doesn't win I expect Tess to mother him so hard that she actually crams him head-first into her womb, live on national TV.

Chris Hollins and Caroline Flack are both currently presenting primetime on the nation's biggest tv channels, Kara Tointon is playing the lead in a tent-pole of ITV's Christmas schedule, Abbey's now the host and judge of Britain's Next Top Model and Louis, Mark and Darren are all sportsmen, so I'm not sure how winning the show was supposed to benefit their careers.

It was probably that winning showed they were popular rather than winning qua winning, but definitely more people have been boosted by the show than just Alesha and Tom.

I totally lost my s*** laughing hard at this!

So Kara was an actress and is now an actress. Chris Hollins was the sports presenter on BBC Breakfast and moved to being an all round presenter. Caroline Flack was a TV show presenter and is now a TV show presenter. Abbey was a model & now she is on Britain's Next Top Model (which is the show that actually launched her modelling career anyway), with a viewing audience of 200 thousand or fewer on a good day.

Whereas Alesha's TV involvement certainly took off upwards and at a tangent from the downward trajectory of her solo singing career and I doubt Tom Chambers would have moved into Top Hat without winning or at least showcasing his tap routines so well on Strictly.

So if Jay wins, is his career going to take a seismic shift from where he is now, compared to where he goes if doesn't win?

My point being I would rather see him do 3 brilliant dances but lose to favourite votes from Eastenders fans or Anton lovers than dance poorly and win just because he is popular. I want to see a great show again (as finals usually are, unlike the QF a couple of weeks ago) irrespective of who picks up the gong.

I agree with your main point, but..

BIB. Kara was very open about her acting career having stalled and didn't work for over a year after leaving EastEnders. She did Strictly to earn some cash to go off and study interior design. After Strictly she was cast in the lead of Pygmalion in the West End with Rupert Everett and Diana Rigg (her only stage work before that being panto with Joe Swash 😂 ). Since then she's made films, had more West End roles, an ongoing part in a major ITV drama series and now this big show at Christmas.

I would Kara Tointon and Louis Smith to the list of winners who have benefited from winning.

After my many years of watching Strictly and barely ever having a favourite win, I'm sort of just glad when the best dancers (whom I overwhelmingly support) get into the final, and the overrated awful one I don't want to wins doesn't win either.

This year is a bit of a breeze really, for me. I like all the finalists, and expect Jay to win but if he doesn't then plus ca change.

I'd have preferred Helen in there I suppose, but then I love Katie and Anton, so I'm fine, and the rest deserve to be there.

Jay has to win. None of the other finalist deserve it.

He's won, accept it.

All we can hope for is a high quality final after such a great series.

Me too.

Personally, I disagree - but we won't get into that, as that's all in another thread!

But the competition is without a doubt Jay's to lose. There's no way he's not the frontrunner and I find it hard to imagine that he won't be topping the public vote. Anita appeared to be his only competition then her public vote collapsed. So with both his technically strongest rivals having been in the dance-off before, I'd say it's pretty much a foregone conclusion.

The only possible fly in the ointment for him would be an on-form Katie. IMHO she's been over marked throughout the competition, and although she too ended up in the dance-off last weekend, there seems to be some hype going on about it being Anton's first ever final … and, while I like Anton even less than Aliona, I do wonder if this hype might bear fruit.

At this stage - it's anyone but Georgia for me.

I really wish I could understand why - her dancing is very good but I haven't been blown away and I just find her irritating (not sure if it's her Corrie character that I just didn't like) - I know that's shallow but that's how it is. I can't take to Giovanni either - far to sweaty and too cringey with all this Latino lover stuff - Vincente got away with it because it was a send up - Giovanni is just a bit too oily.

I'm hoping Aliajz gets a bit of a starring role in the professional dances - I'll be more than happy with that.

Come On Kellie

Jill and Kara both gained a lot of profile from the show . As did Natasha.

You can add Ali to your list - she's the one who did the most difficult dancing jobs post show too.

This is an odd year. They have already lost one potential winner, and still have 4 who might score highest on any one dance. Winning is going to be very random. Katie is the least complete dancer, and Jay is the least complete performer , but there's 3 females competing for a vote, and only one, young male - who has a big fanbase and probably younger fans voting more on the net. Winning may not mean much.

Normally I think it does matter who wins, some of the winners have won for nothing to do with their relative ability, and 3 of the best females ever were beaten by far worse males. That s just makes it a nonsense - we might as well have watched them tell jokes, or sit on a beach.