Hi Folks,

Can anyone tell me if the celebrity dance partners are actually paid for appearing on SCD?

I assumed because it was all for Children In Need, that they wouldn't be paid - that they would give their time for free, like many of the celebs we'll see tonight.

But I just read a post where someone said something along the lines of "the celebs shouldn't moan about lack of training time, they committed to the programme, they're getting well paid for it, so they should make time to train".

Does anyone know, are they "donating" their time, or are they being paid?

Thanks in advance,

Fam

Would guess there being paid, the pro dancers get paid and the celebs are having to put in a lot of time to practice a full days work worth.

I read an interview with Mark and the practice for the swing was a 9 hour day!

I believe only a proportion of the the voting money and book profit goes to CIN?

Yes, they are paid. And they are paid a bit more now that it is repeated on a Sunday.

To be fair, celebs still have bills to pay like any of us, so asking them to give up 3 months for charity would be a bit much. Not many people could afford to do that. It's very different for those people giving up just one evening for the CIN show.

As far as I know, none of the voting money goes to the BBC. Most goes to CIN, and a bit is kept by the phone companies. The BBC pays the celebs and pros as they would pay anyone for working on a show.
Last edited by fern3 : 17-11-2006 at 11:22

Yes, they are paid. Rather more than the professional dancers and judges I believe, but nowhere near as much as Tess Daly and miles away from Bruce.

Thanks everyone for clarifying. I don’t know how I thought the celebs paid their bills during their SCD period. I guess I just thought they had generous bosses who gave them paid leave to appear on, and train for, SCD.

However I was watching that other Children In Need program the other night, “Celebrity Scissor Hands”, and I heard one of the “celebs” on there saying they were giving their time for free, that they weren’t paid. Sure, it’s nowhere near as time consuming as SCD, but still, two weeks without pay is quite generous. Mind you, the level of celebrity on the Scissor Hands program, I kinda think they won’t have that much else to do anyway. Three of them I have remotely heard of, the rest are strangers to me.

At a guess the people are scissorhands are getting expenses and without wishing to offend any of their fans their level of celebrity is not huge so the publicity must be great for them!

I think it would be unrealistic to expect them to do it for nothing. It's not like a one-off concert/personal appearance. They are giving up their time for weeks when it might be difficult for them to fit in other work during that time.
The charity money is raised from the voting.

When there was a big hoo-hah about Bruce's pay, I remember reading in the Daily Mirror that the celebs picked up £25,000. The pro dancers received £17,000. The judges were picking up what was said to be the TV equivalent of the minimum wage of around £13,700 +

Not a lot. If you delve into the news archives on here, you'll find the Mirror article in question.

I was upset that the pros earn comparitively little for a Saturday prime time show. Nobody can argue that they don't work really hard choreographing and contributing so much to the show.

However what wasn't answered for me is whether the celebs rate goes up in proportion to how long they stay in for, it'd be strange if they're reaching the semi and the final for instance doing several dances, and only picking up the same money as somebody going out in the early weeks.

Or else the celebs are simply paid weekly...

Are some of the celebs under contract to the BBC already - like Carole, Matt and Louisa?
Would it come under part of the money they are paid already or will they get extra?

As far as I can gather the BBC is paying for a taxi to bring them to tv centre and thats it.

Hats off to Michelle, who has her own business and no desire to continue in entertainment in any way for giving up her own time to do it.

tess got £100,000 last year and claudia winkleman got £110,000. It's probably more this year because of the two extra weeks this year and the sunday repeat. Last year when all the wages of the judges, dancers and hosts were revealed their was no mention of the celebrities wages. So i presume if the celebrities were being paid they would of have been leaked at the time.

Well here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6kMuUy8jkA Emma says "and it's all for CIN"...

Is that salary for EACH episode or the whole series??

For the whole series