Did anyone watch Paul O Grady today when Ben Shepard was on?
At one point they started talking about Fiona and SCD! Ben started saying how well he said Fiona had done and then Paul started saying how bad he thought the judges were treating her and how nasty her partner (Brendan) was!
I started getting quite annoyed as I don't like Fiona getting all the sympathetic publicity! She was the one who signed up to do SCD, yes she did have to look after her kids and things, but so did many others too (Bill has kept on doing BBC breakfast whilst on SCD, but i don't think fiona kept on doing GMTV!)
Also, like so many others have said, it annoys me when people start saying how bad Brendan and the judges are! The judges have to criticise, its their job to tell the dancers how bad or good they are. As for Brendan, he did admit that he finds it hard to hide his emotions, and so for that I think he did rather well considering he had to put with someone as difficult to work with as Fiona was.

It really annoys me, and I just hope that after this saturday, the controversy over Fiona & Brendan would have died down a bit

She did, she just doesn't do a full week, SCD or no SCD.

Do you know what gets me? People forget that these judges have years of experience between them.
If only the celebs would LISTEN to what the judges say and look on it as ADVICE rather than criticism, maybe they wouldn't go off in a flurry of talcum powder rattling their beads.
The likes of me couldn't afford a lesson from one of those judges or dancers!

I hate people slagging off Brendan! I quite like the firey badboy thing he has happening!! The judges talk a lot of sense, they know what they're talking about, but does Craig need to be quite so brutal?!

Well, I feel that on the whole the judges, being experts in their respective fields, tend to call it as they see it - with perhaps a little leeway left for the purposes of gathering ratings via the 'entertainment' of seeing how outspoken they might prove to be to the competing 'cupples'.
As for the celebrities - those who choose to actually listen to their professional partners seem to do the best in terms of actual dancing .. but because of the way the voting is carried out, the judges' scores can be virtually meaningless.
I think we all need to consider that no matter how enjoyable the show is on several different levels, and no matter how well people dance (I'm looking at you, Will and Hanna), in the end it comes down to a popularity contest .. how else would the hapless Fiona have survived for longer than the first week of this series .. not to mention that gormless, clumsy, unco-ordinated boy from Eastenders (sorry the name escapes me) who I think actually made it as far as the final!

Will & Hanna have been in the bottom 2 when they've done latin dances, that he's not too good at. When they've done ballroom, which he rocks at they've stayed in and got good judges marks. So the dancing matters a bit!!

"As for Brendan, he did admit that he finds it hard to hide his emotions, and so for that I think he did rather well considering he had to put with someone as difficult to work with as Fiona was."

Yes Fiona did join up voluntarily but probably didn't know how hard she would find it. We'd all love to be able to dance properly, but imagine how you'd feel if, having signed up to do the show, you found out in training that no matter hard you tried, you really couldn't do it

She could have pulled out to save face and avoid all this flak she's been geting, but she didn't. AND she carried on with a less than sympathetic partner - and that's putting it mildly. How she didn't land him one I don't know!

What was Brendan "putting up with" someone who couldn't dance? Well that was the point of it wasn't it, for him as the professional to teach her how to dance. I think the standard she achieved says more about his teaching rather than her ability to dance!

I quite agree that so far 'Latin' has not been Will's strength - but my point is that even on his worst day his dancing is streets ahead of Bill and Dennis - he just hasn't got a rabid fan-base who will vote for him regardless.