Blimey, poor Kelly, her schedule has been crazy, I guess it all caught up with her this final week. At an earlier stage of the competition I was worried she'd do a Scott Maslen and almost crash out on the dance floor, but thankfully that didn't happen.

Incidentally, I don't get the dislike for her and Kevin. I understand that different personalities appeal, their dancing wasn't to everyones taste (not always to mine if I'm honest) and yes they were very excitable on occasions.

However I felt that they put their all into it, were genuine, friendly and encouraging to others and had a really great partnership. There were far better candidates to label insincere, 'show offs', 'precious about their work', or 'ungracious in defeat' etc Not that I would (here) but still..

I'm sure not all Jay's fans are like that but people like you give them a bad name. Honestly. Read below. How old are you anyway? Twelve?


ETA: hope Kellie is alright now.

Is mentioning Kellie having fainting and doing a great job in-spite of that in any way taking it away that Jay won?
Just because people can say good for her and praise her has no implication on the fact he and Aliona have already won the trophy.

Worth noting it's a small minority of Jay and Aliona fans saying anything.

I just hope Kellie's alright now. What I don't get is why did they (EastEnders) pile on her workload as she was trying to do something as mentally and physically exhausting as Strictly? Ashley Taylor Dawson had similar issues but Hollyoaks isn't even on the same channel. Surely there is some responsibility there for the well-being of the cast? I suppose the EastEnders production team may have warned her she had a few heavy months coming up and she decided to do Strictly anyway.

And she threw herself into it, gave it everything and finished credibly. And considering she was unwell prior to the show... well, no one would know! She put in a brilliant performance.

yeah and all this banging on about 'heavy workloads' I mean don't forget anita who somehow had to do the one show and countryfile and..and...

Absolutely the truth!! The Jay fans up in the attic have been a lovely bunch

Has it always been thus?

I think you've mistaken the meaning of my post. In fact I believe I'm in agreement with you and don't understand some of the unpleasant things being written about her and Kevin given that the forum and public favourites won!

I initially read this as Kellie farted before the final .

Must have been nerves - understandable really

Great post

I agree with all of this. I did feel that the judges tried a bit too hard to push Kellie as their winner but that's not her fault, nor is it Kevin's. Both of them seem like thoroughly decent, hardworking people who give so much to entertain us. I was very impressed with Kellie last night (and across the series generally), but even more so now! Still glad Jay won as he's my favourite, but massive respect to Kellie as well.

Agree^^^^

Jay and then Georgia were my favourites - but really agree with the above.

I really like Kevin and Kellie was fine - friendly, enthusiastic, keen, very hard working, encouraging. Didn't always altogether like their routines and found Kellie a bit over the top, but can't understand anyone actively disliking them?

They offered to decrease her workload but she said no. Towards the end of SCD, she did get a bit of a break.

It's got worse over the years - it used to be positively genteel in the days when it was pink (and fluffy). There was always a bit of controversy of course, but not the really personal, spiteful stuff. The degree of venom directed at the Clifton family is mind boggling.

Prior to the final I don't think it was any worse than any other year. Since the final... I swear it wasn't even this bad in series 6 and that was a bad year!

Nice post. I think all the finalists did well and worked hard. Although I had my favourites I was happy for any of them to win. The judges bias for and against did mar the evening a bit but not the dancing or the people competing.

If you read the article through it actually sounds she had a dizzy spell rather than actually fainting. The papers talk so much sh*t. She has been pushing it and the nerves etc. just got a bit much. She gathered herself and put a super energetic performance. Good for her.

So have the Cliftons galvanised something here?

Thanks. I sense she's someone who likes to be busy all of the time - my best friend's like that!

They did well to keep it quiet (the silent ones are always the worst imo) as no one got wind of it

I think their story-lining is done months in advance so perhaps there wasn't a huge amount the Eastenders production could do about that. I imagine that they did what they could to accommodate Kellies duties on Strictly, and that was that. To be fair to Eastenders they are under huge pressure to produce especially at this time of year.

Actually I read somewhere that Kellie did say that she knew the time on Strictly would be crazy work wise, and family wise but she went for it anyway, because she knew it would be three months at the most.

I think perceived bias of the show towards Kevin and Kellie has galvanised something on here.

Whether that's fair or not is being discussed on every other thread at the moment!

It's the tone of the forum that's deteriorated as much as anything else. Opposing fans have always slugged it out, but these days it's just downright mean and nasty at times - far more than it ever was. Not nice.

Hope Kellie's okay now - must have been a bit of a scare for her.

She wasn't my favourite, but I did admire her work ethic, and the amount of energy she put into everything, and she did deserve to be in the final IMO.

No - I think they're an easy target for the proliferating spite, that's all.

I also think a lot of the spleen directed at Susanna Reid - and believe me, some of the stuff written about her was truly vile - was dumped on Kevin out of convenience. Made a nice little package of hate objects.

Jo got hammered when she joined last year simply because she's Kevin's sister, and so on....