Len said something unique about each contestant;

Ore learnt with no experience
Louise the most consistent
Danny the one who sets the bar.


And if you actually watch Len on the talk shows he's been doing lately he thought Danny was the best dancer.

Looking at Claudia's week 1 Cha-Cha, you can see she wasn't a dancer.

She worked her way up to the standard she was when she left.

I think some people are readng too much into every little thjng.

Like, last nigt the judges and Len pointed oht what was remarkable about each pair and celeb. So they said how good Louise was with musicality.

I have to say, for me, I keep saying to myself how good Ore was because he had no previous experience, because it really is the most remarkable thing about him. To gt to that standard, really, as a dancer myself, the amount of hours you can train to gt things right, to remember a routine and then sell it too, people cannot do it in years of trying, but from a complete novice to what he produced last night, it is more then noteworthy.


What Len said to Danny is a comlement, I do not believe the others would have tried so hard if he wasn't so good and people knew the standard was set and you have to rise tk reach it, he did drive everyone to be the absolute best they could be and that is a compliment to anyone.
Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal often say it about each other, they wouldn't have acheived as much as they did in their career if the other wasn't as good and pushing them all the way.

I was rooting for Danny from day 1. Love the partnership he had with Oti, a dream dance couple. BUT - I was rather underwhelmed with their showdance. Good as it was, it was, imo, too aggressive and the fact that I have no love for the song didn't help. It wasn't a WOW! dance. Totally agree that if they had gone down the jazz route, with some nifty Jacko type moves thrown in or - and this would have been my idea of heaven, similar to what Louis did with the DD routine - Danny as Tony Manero/Oti as Stephanie routine to More Than A Woman, not identical but to take elements of it, put their own twist on it. Danny would have been fabulous. Maybe they just don't have time to get anything like that spot on in time for the final, which is why they tend to do a mash-up of moves/dances they've already done.

But musicality and driving people on to do better are hardly vote motivators when compared to repeating that someone who is being marked above them has never danced before and embraces the spirit if the show. Yes, both were most definitely complements but they were hardly vote getting complements.

There are a lot of similarities though, turning, performig, in gymnastics you are actually required to dance in your floor routine and most take some dance classes to help with that.

It is a transferrable skill and you also know how to remember and perform a routine.

As an example, at our dance school we had gymnasts begin, within a few months they had become national champions in dance.

All of the gymnasts I have seen do scd or dwts seem to get to a very high standard very quickly because of their abilities in dance and the skills they already have from gym.

My main issue was last week when Len said that Ore was disadvantaged because he had done neither dancing nor gymnastics prior to Strictly.... quite what gymnastics had to do with anything I don't know, but it seemed like a blatant attempt to try and persuade viewers that Claudia was somehow less of a novice than Ore!

Anyway, whilst Len probably won Ore some votes I'm satisfied that there were enough other factors at play for it to be a very fair result, i.e. Danny making mistakes and being in the bottom 2 last week, Louise being crap, and Ore actually being really good when it mattered most.

You said before that Danny's wasn't really a comliment.

There is no such thing as a vote motivating comliment, they have said the same to other celebs and they did not win and slme are not given that high praise and do. Last year Jay didn't get great feedback in his first dances, but he won.

People vote who they vote, saying someone has no training, when he doesn't will not make the biggest difference.

Anyway, what is comparable? You cannot silence a judge from saying a celeb has no training and has come on so well. What woukd be a comparable praise to Danny when he has a lot of experience in dancing and has performed on the West end stage? They can hardly say the same thing.

Danny got the first 40 of the series, not Ore.

There is very much such a thing as a non-vote getting complement. Sofabet's an excellent site focused on The X Factor and some of the tactics at play there, many of which can be transferred to Strictly - particularly in the last couple of years but there have been isolated incidents in the past too.

I think Jay had built up enough support to offset the criticsim in the final; indeed the show had built him up reasonably until the final and possibly overplayed their hand with the criticism, creating a sympathy/underdog vote on top of his current fan base.

Saying it once then leaving it alone wouldn't make much of a difference no. Saying it again and again and again over and over and over will bring it to the front of everyone's minds. Why shouldn't they say it? More like why did they need to say it again. They'd made their point, they could have stuck to simply critiqued the dancing.

It does annoy me that these celebs with dance experience get so much stick for appearing on a show that they were ASKED to do. Anyone would be crazy to turn it down. It is great publicity for them. How is it the celeb's fault? Surely it is down to the producers or whoever asks them on. Danny said that he was asked four times but he was too busy for three of those. I don't believe that Ore has had no dance experience. Several Strictly professionals have said that he has had training and I believe them more than Len. The only ones I think that don't have some form of dance training are the Ed Balls types.

People still moaning after a great final with a worthy winner.
I think the result just shows how many viewers are prepared to vote for what they see "on the night". All the business about fan groups and YouTube views was blown out of the water in the final.
I was going to be a Danny voter based on the series, but have to admit that Ore nailed it on the night. Oti had been brilliant throughout with her choreography, but her showdance just didn't do it for me. You have to be very biased not to a agree that Ore was the best over the three dances last night.

I recall when Darren Gough won Len said he was a sportsman who, through hard work and dedication has become a dancer. He had backed amateurs in the past.

You mean out of the finalists I presume?
Because ore did the comic relief dance in 2013 to Hey Ya by Outkast, which Arlene Philips was wetting herself over...ref you tube. Nothing looked 'amateur' about that to me.
No, the TRUE 'amateurs' ie. absolutely no experience were the likes of Greg, Ed, Naga (surprisingly) and Melvin.

It's all subjective. Despite Danny's mistake, I thought his performances were better. Ore didn't really do it for me.

Well the jooodges agreed with you, both last night and more controversially the semi....the one that stank imo because it gave Ore the the leg-up he needed.
I thought Ore won the first round, though he had the best-choice judges pick of the three. I thought Danny edged the showdance over Ore...but hey the public decide, and this year the vote was volatile. Last year as we now know, Jay would have won even if he had fallen over in all his three dances!! Not the same level of 'favourite' this year.

[QUOTE=Tejas;84910569]My main issue was last week when Len said that Ore was disadvantaged because he had done neither dancing nor gymnastics prior to Strictly.... quite what gymnastics had to do with anything I don't know, but it seemed like a blatant attempt to try and persuade viewers that Claudia was somehow less of a novice than Ore!

Anyway, whilst Len probably won Ore some votes I'm satisfied that there were enough other factors at play for it to be a very fair result, i.e. Danny making mistakes and being in the bottom 2 last week, Louise being crap, and Ore actually being really good when it mattered most.[/quote]

I said 5 weeks ago that the judges wanted those 3 in the final...len's comments on the night were mean to influence.
Last night there were other factors......I just don't think Danny had the massive public support that people on here imagined, and louise fell a bit flat in between the two others........so Ore was the beneficiary of the 'anti' favourite vote.

No, I'd agree with you about the semi-final. The judges were VERY generous to Ore.
But last night, I'd have to go along with the judges. I just didn't "get" Oti's showdance and I've loved nearly everything she did previously.

Not several, James Jordan.

And you do not have to believe Len, it came straight from Ore's mouth, he has never had dance training.

I got the "bland thing" from reading various Strictly blogs. It doesn't preclude that he's a perfectly nice person and a gentleman. After all, here on DS Louise, who by all accounts is lovely and sweet, is consistently labelled bland, beige, and boring.

This is the lie that lost Danny support and I am sick to death of people repeating it.

He had ONE year of basic dance training during his 3 years at Arts Ed. He understudied for the role of Boq for 21 months (a singing part) when not required he was off stage, not part of the ensemble dancers. He is only 28. From age 23 to 27 he was in Hollyoaks.

Please tell me when in all this time, he was supposed to get "years" of stage dance experience?

Sorry, you have to cross Melvin off that list. He used to teach street dance.

I thought Len paid Danny some great compliments which were completely honest:

On his QS:

"You are a superb dancer… and you, the standard of dancing you’ve produced throughout this competition has been the catalyst to make everyone else dance better. You have set the bar. Your standard of dance is the one that everyone is aiming for. I am so disappointed - you did so many nice things - I moaned about too much conducting: you cut out half of that; you did everything that could possibly please me; but it’s live, it’s here, there was a pretty big mistake going on, but you, you’re a fantastic dancer Danny, you truly, truly are."

On his Showdance:

"It’s a show dance. It was full of show, it was full of dance, there were moments of tango, moments of Paso Doble: but, in addition, there were moments of magic."

On his Samba:

"You can’t improve on perfection. It was perfect last time and if anything it had a little bit more control and it was even more perfect if there can be this time around."

So this was all part of some devious Len masterplan to manipulate viewers into not voting for Danny? That's what you believe is it?

I don't believe for a minute Len was the slightest bit bothered which of the three would win, or that he would, in this his final final, be having his strings pulled by the producers.

Still banging endlessly on about that, is he?

There's not much there which would encourage viewers though. In the first comment "he standard of dancing you’ve produced throughout this competition has been the catalyst to make everyone else dance better. You have set the bar" can be read as "You've always been good. There's no journey there for you." The other two comments hardly had much in way of hyping up the audience; they're very brief comments. If you've got the time, and no worries if not, please can you post the critique for Ore from him?