In the Big Book of Strictly Wuz Robbed the one bottom of the actual and combined leaderboard going home wouldn't even make a footnote.

They opened it in series six by doing exactly the same thing - and offered the public the opportunity to apply for a refund should they wish to do so. In my mind they should have done the same thing this time around.

Of course, if they just ditched the Dance Off for good they wouldn't have this issue at all. As it is, they have a process in place where the bottom two get a chance to save themselves if need be yet one couple was denied that chance.

This is going to really annoy people (more than I am already), so I'll put it in spoilers. You have been warned:

I think its more a case of perceived injustice ie Melvin denied a dance off rather than people wanting him to stay in ... if you know what I mean .. our sense of fair play etc etc ...

No, because both would have had the opportunity to dance, resulting in the possibility that Anastacia could have made an error which would have put her place in jepoardy and saved Melvin. If there had been a Dance Off, Melvin would have had a chance to save himself and it would have gone to the Judges Vote. As it is he wasn't given that opportunity.

I'm with those who would like to see the Dance Off scrapped. But whilst it's there everyone should be given the opportunity to save themselves if they fall in the bottom two - not include it one week and remove it the next.

Maybe people are unhappy because they wuz robbed of being robbed?

What actually happened was arguably unfair on Melvin. What you are proposing would definitely be unfair on all fifteen couples, would have been a nightmare to execute and would have caused more problems later on.

Shoulda Woulda Coulda - c'mon, he was awful and wasn't going to miraculously improve between the first performance and the dance off - if there had been one

I wonder what the complaints would have been if Melvyn had been saved over Anastacia, with or without a dance off?

Thank you!!! The only way I could have explained it was have gone I went to #reed up on what Brendan wrote

How??? People are acting as though they have never carried the Judges points and votes across two weeks when they didn't want to... and yet they have.

If people don't want their vote to count then the BBC can set up a refund option to get their money back and an option on the website to do similar and 'withdraw' the votes.

I'm not sure how it would be unfair on all fifteen couples. If you cannot connect with the public and are not good enough to be high enough on the leaderboard after three weeks then so be it. At least the process will be followed to the end with a Dance Off instead of changing the elimination rules at the last moment.


I said first of all Anastacia should have gone if she couldn't perform - but then realised that was unfair as well as not following previous protocol with injuries.

I wouldn't have minded if Melvin had gone home through the usual way but he didn't. That's my problem with the situation. Unlike many other celebrities, he didn't get a chance to fight for his place which I think is unfair. I don't think that it would have been a big deal for them to hold back on eliminating someone, this week. They could have just done a double elimination next week. I would feel this way if it was any of the celebrities.

People are calling Melvin, 'crap' but he is a complete novice. If he had stayed in the competition longer, he might have got better. Not every one is good straight away. Maybe he even needed a better teacher.

Knowing the facts, in my view what should have happened is that Anastacia should not have danced with her injury. Anyone, in fact, who sustains an injury during training that renders them unable to complete the choreography as intended, should not dance it on the night (nor a quickly amended version). I know there's this whole, the show must go on, but honestly, the show has medical advisers and their advice should be heeded. It's an entertainment show, not something to risk your health over. That's not entertaining and I didn't enjoy watching Anastacia trying to get through the routine. I didn't think it was brave, or sensible, it just looked awkard and, well, painful.

But, for arguements sake , Anastasia takes a bye next week - she still isn't eligible for elimination and it gets even messier.

Week three was meant to be a clean slate - now the other contestants discover that their leaderboard position will be determined by their scores in weeks 1 and 2? How is that fair on them? And that doesn't even get into the problems skipping an elimination would cause down the line. Your suggestion would be ludicrously complicated and unnecessary when the simplest, fairest solution (albeit not one that would make everyone happy) was to go back to the public vote.

No he didn't, they literally wentt off the least public votes

How would a double elimination work? If they automatically eliminate both of the bottom two - surely that's just as unfair on both of them as it was on Melvin, not getting the chance of the dance-off? If they have all of the bottom three couples in the dance-off and save one of them - surely that's just as unfair on the couple third from bottom, who now have to dance again even though they wouldn't have previously, as well as being unfair on at least one of the two couples eliminated?

That is so going to happen.

No, not like that. They could add the phone votes from this week and next week. Then the bottom two do the dance off.

there's nothing unfair here - they've just followed the Strictly rules.

Erm, so how exactly is that a double elimination?

The problem with the series 6 semi final was the knock on of being a celeb down and refusing to alter the set up, even though it was obvious all the previous week (at least) that it was going to come a cropper .

Sorry, correction, they should have just not eliminated anyone this week.

They would have had to have a double elimination at some point, and that would bring about all the problems I mentioned above. I really do think they did the fairest and only workable option.

The problem with the series 6 semi was that it was a perfect storm of the maths landing so that literally everybody could see it was possible for the public favourite to leave via dance-off. This had always been the case before, but the tie just made it really obvious (if they'd scored Lisa one mark lower, Tom may well have gone home legitimately, which would have been hilarious because people would have realised 5 seconds after they loaded Tom into the taxi and the show would have been done)

The problem with the series 6 final is they invented some new arcane system which I think went :

(Ranking based on Semi final judges rank + semi finals public vote rank + finals judge rank) + Finals public vote rank = overall score, with ties decided on public vote in the final

leading to

Rachel (3+2+2 = 7) = 3 + 2 = 5
Tom (1 +3+1 = 5) = 1 + 3 = 4
Lisa (3+1+3 = 7) = 3 + 1 = 4

But even I can't be 100% sure. It was needlessly complicated.

Let's be honest though - the likelihood of that happening? Nil. Because this assumes the judges always judge on the dance off alone and they quite blatantly don't.

Melvin was awful, all the judges slated it and they would've been sympathetic to Anastacia and her injury. They would've voted based upon last week rather than this, taking her injury into account.

The only chance Melvin had of staying was against Ed, Lesley or Naga and even then he didn't stand a great chance.

One of those things; whatever they do would be slightly unfair but giving everyone another bite of the cherry is the fairest way forward.


Either same as The X Factor where bottom place goes then the next two perform for survival - as long as this is explained BEFORE the show then it's fairer then suddenly ditching someone without a Dance Off on the night iself - or havea three way Dance Off where the judges vote to save one couple.