Its success led to the creation of UKTV, still part-owned by the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, which operates several channels showing different types of archive programming. These included UK Arena (now defunct), UK Style (home and lifestyle), UK Drama, UK Play/PlayUK (music and comedy - now defunct), UK Horizons (now defunct) and UK History, as well as the time-shifted UK Gold +1, and UK Gold Classics, soon renamed to UK Gold 2. UK Gold 2 originally screened morning programmes from UK Gold time-shifted to the evening of the same day, but was relaunched with a completely new programme lineup and renamed UKG2 on November 12, 2003. Another channel, UK Living, was renamed LivingTV when it broke away from the joint BBC-Flextech ownership (now solely owned by Virgin Media Television)

While Virgin Media Television do indeed have a relationship with BBC Worldwide through the UKTV joint venture, you are misinformed about LIVING.

Yes, once upon a time it was called UK Living, but it had nothing to do with UKTV, which I believe is the very reason it dropped the 'UK' prefix. It has always been 100% owned by Flextech/Virgin Media Television.

Getting someone will record this for me (hopefully) because i don't get Living TV.
If anyone has time to post on here tomorrow night about the show that would be great

Karen Hardy was on Breakfast this morning, talking about the show.

On the Karen Hardy thread, katie_p says she will put the clip on YouTube.

In the same slot, was Dr Rosemary Leonard, Breakfast's resident doctor.

The slot began with some kind of trailer for the program. This was a bit like the trailer on Living, but was quite a lot longer.

Karen talked a bit about the experience of being a judge.

Dr Rosemary talked about the genuine benefits of dance, for people of all ages. She also said that she was a big fan of SCD, and has also been a keen amateur dancer herself, for many years.

Karen explained how the length of the dances will increase each week, upto 2½ minutes, and how there will be compulsory lifts.

Karen explained how the confidence of the participants had improved during the series. "They started off in sacks.. half way through the series... you will be shocked..."

We then saw some another clip from the program, this time of people getting on the scales to see how much weight they had lost.

Charlie Stayt (always a bit cynical) asked if there was any voyeurism involved in "watching fat pepople dance". He got a put down from Karen.

Karen made a point about how conventional exercising in a gym is mind-numbing, and how much more attractive it is for people to dance, rather than go to a gym.

Karen told a personal story of how her own mother, at the age of 63 had started dancing, for social reasonas, and went from a size 14 to size 12 in the process.

Charlie was so nasty and unnecessary with that comment, love how Karen but him in his place and I noted a daggers look from Sian too.

Can't wait for tonight

xxx

Here's the "Diet on the DanceFloor" preview that was on Breakfast, which is now on YouTube:

Is Jodie the one who was Danny's partner in Strictly Dance Fever?

I think this is totally naff and I won't be watching again.

I would be if Karen wasn't involved.

Ughhh. That was ...interesting.
Karen is really, really, really annoying. Like seriously.
Although the dancer that got kicked off this week was quite fit, really. He looked scarily like James from that band, Busted though...
Matt was yummy.

None of these people are OVERLY fat.

The dietician woman makes me want to gouge my eyes out with my biro. She seems overly critical to the point of rudeness, no sense of encouragement, and basically, she's just become a new hatred of mine.

Matt and Karen and the brief showings of Nicole make it more tolerable.

So what happened in the programme??

I couldnt watch as I havent got living tv

I thought it was quite an enjoyable hour. Considering that it must have been produced on a very modest budget (peanuts compared with SCD) I think they did a decent job.

I found all the participants a bit confusing at first, especially the 10 "pro" dancers, who I didn't know any of, and most of them didn't seem to be introduced or otherwise identified. The uniform black outfits that all the pros were wearing put all the attention on the contestants, which was a good thing.

A couple of the female pros (who I didn't know) looked very nice.

Must mention one male pro (Julien, I think) - seemed extremely narcissistic and really full of himself - might make a suitable partner for Karen H sometime.

None of the contestants seemed massively overweight to me. A couple of the women looked very nice, as they were.

I think Marissa Jaret Winokur (a contestant on the last series of Dancing with the Stars) may have been heavier than most of these women. For anyone who didn't see DWTS, there's a sample of Marissa Winokur on DWTS here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNN8YhVNQO0

Back to Diet.. the camerawork throughout much of the dance routines seemed to be focused on the heads and shoulders, so you couldn't see much of the contestants from the waist down. Focusing on the heads and shoulders may have been intentional in some cases, in order to avoid the embarrassment of seing the feet of some people who might not have been moving them.

I think a lot of the dancers seemed very nervous, understandably so. They ought to relax a bit as they get used to appearing.

In the judging - Matthew Cutler finds it very hard not to be ever-so-polite to the contestants. Karen doesn't have that problem. Matthew's comments seemed a bit vapid and weak. Matthew also seems to be a bit slow up top - when Karen made a quick remark about "cool fridge", Matthew's response was "stylish fridge" - he didn't get it.

The "doctor" on he panel didn't seem to have that much to say, with a result that the judges' comments were dominated by Karen - a bit too much opportunity for Karen to dominate the show.

The final elimination was a bit strange - one person was selected as having done the worst dance and one person was selected as having made the least weight loss, and then they had to they choose between them - a very difficult sort of choice.

That's only the first episode - should be interesting to see how the series develops, and as we get to know more about the contestants, and the various pros.

I think the "pro" dancers are some of Karen's students, Julian definitely is.

I disagree that Matthew's comments were vapid and weak. He was being polite but still making his point. Karen was being more direct. And Matthew made the comment about a fridge first by saying one contestant looked like a big fridge coming towards him which Karen then followed up with "cool fridge" which Matthew amended to "stylish fridge". Maybe I don't get it either but I don't quite see what your point is there.


One person was selected as having done the worst dance and one was selected as being the least fit after a week, not as having lost the least weight. The emphasis was on fitness and the person who went out hadn't really tried at all.

I thoroughly enjoyed the programme and am looking forward to the rest of the series. And it was lovely to see Nicole demonstrating the dances with Matthew.

I'd still like to know if the professional dancer called Jodie is the same one who danced with Danny in Strictly Dance Fever as I know she's not in the stage show with him anymore. Anyone????

Just read Loulabelle's Strictly Come Blogging and have found the answer - yes it is the same Jodie who was in Strictly Dance Fever! I loved her dancing with Danny and thought they should have won. Hope she and her "fat" partner go far in Diet On The Dancefloor.

I agree about Matthew, I thought he did a fantastic job. Karen was good too, maybe a bit direct at times. But these contestants, some at least, have very low self esteem. However bad they are, any Craig-like 'complete dance disaster' comments would be completely inappropriate. Maybe Matthew was polite, but he still made it clear who he thought was the best and who was the worst.

I think the point with eliminations was they would choose the worst dancer and the person who had achieved the least in terms of fitness, and then decide between these two which one least deserved to stay. I thought they made the right choice, because the worst dancer had a much better attitude and really cared about getting it right. If the other person had been more honest about why she gained weight and cared about putting it right the following week, maybe she would have had another chance.

Camera work was actually WORSE than on Strictly
And totally irritating that Matt and Nicole performed two routines, but rather than respectfully showing them in full, the producer decided to show the reactions of the contestants

Loved, loved loved seeing the pro dancers again, but I'm really not sure about the 'fat' contestants.

A size 14 being fat? C'mon. I think the biggest woman was a size 16 (the UK average). I know they probably couldn't use much 'bigger' contestants due to the agility needed, but size 14 & 16 being heralded as tragic? Not too happy with that.

I thought the outfit torture was way too exploitative, watching pretty, cameras revelling in average sized women showing their shame about how ugly they felt was horrible. They needed Gok there and then.

Can't help thinking about the after effects too. Lose weigh by working out 5 days a week with a professional dancer, then stop and go back to your real life and expect that weight to stay off? More self esteem issues imminent.

Rather enjoyed this - the budget was obviously miniscule (I bet the entire series was only a fraction of the cost of a single episode of Strictly), but it does quite a good job of filling the SCD shaped hole in one's life before the new series starts. It was nice to see Karen again (even if she was trying a bit too hard to be Craig Revel-Horwood) and if Matt didn't quite manage to shake off his pretty-but-dim image he at least came across as a decent bloke who genuinely wanted to help the contestants.

Slight criticism, but only in TV could most of those contestants be described as obese. Yes most of them were a bit well padded in places, but especially for the women all the curves were in the right places (there may have been more of them on a few) and several of them were simply flat-out gorgeous. If they're supposed to represent Joe and Jane couch potato then they haven't really picked the right bunch.

Only other criticism - there really wasn't enough dancing on what was supposed to be a dance show. Hopefully this will change as the number of contestants drops though.

All in all, there's been a gap in the reality market for a proper non-celeb version of SCD (i.e. something other than the dire Strictly Dance Fever), and i think this is probably the best stab at it yet.

There is a difference between obesity and clinical/morbid obesity. Size 16 isn't huge by today's standards, but most people that size will be near or over the threshold for obesity. It's not 'only in TV'- it's a medical definition and completely accurate. If this TV show helps people realise that, it will be a good thing.

Low budget or not, it looked totally amateurish with its 'school hall' type location, the Blue Peter judges table and terrible camera work (on my TV I could only see one dancer in a pair a lot of the time they were not in hold!). I couldn't believe it when the 'before' shots of the men showed them in bright blue 'Rosemary Conely' all in one leotards!!!!

The women may have self esteem issues, but they are all definitely attractive and hardly 'fat', especially compared with the male contestants - which means it is not exactly a level playing field. And choosing the outfits was cringeworthy.

I agree that the final elimination was a bit strange - I thought they should have had a dance off giving each pair a lifeline and then the choice should have been made. Even though she gained weight, I thought Odette did a better dance than many of the others. Does this mean you are out of the competition the minute you don't lose weight?

A lot of people like me who are larger than any of the female contestants are going to think "Why didn't they choose some larger women?" - and it won't encourage them to try this way of losing weight at all.

Not even Matt, Karen & Nicole made this show work for me.

Fair point, and one which I think the show's doctor also made. And there may well also be the issue that someone else pointed out that contestants that are too big might actually be dangerous for the professionals when it comes to lifts, etc. I still think the girls especially were slightly too good looking to be entirely representative of the audience though (We're only at episode one, and most of them were already looking great in their dancer dresses at the end - some of the guys still looked a bit porky though...)

I sort of suspected this when the presented on Breakfast tv said this that 'some of the contestants didn't look obese' or words to that effect. It's less to do with tv and more to do with the fact that BMI takes no account of someone's build but is done on weight and height alone. I'm technically obese as is a friend of mine and it's rubbish since even if I lead a monkish existance and treated my body like a temple I still wouldn't look like Kylie Minogue. The lightest I've ever been is when I was 16 eat apples for snacks if I snacked at all and went for a bike ride everytime I got bored with revising for my GSCE's and even then I was above my so-called ideal weight. The medical profession needs to modify it's weight indicatators to take account of the fact that some people are naturally stockier and ergo heavier than others. One girl on this program looked fine to me - just a big girl naturally. I also think some of the gubbins the medical advice people come out with is completely unrealistic - I mean four units is classed as a binge (that's two pints of normal beer and if you drink a nice real ale type beer that can be one pint) and it's counter-productive because if a binge so ridiculously low than people are just going to think 'well I'm binging drinking a couple of pints so getting really hammered isn't going to do much more harm'.
Hard to believe these idiots were once medical students who are reknowned for getting completely off their faces when they're not studying.

The whole 'obese' thing as a marker of health is rubbish. It's just the height to weight ratio. It doesn't take into account what that weight actually is, or what the body type is.

I'm BMI 29.5, so 0.5 under 'obese', but it's muscle. I'm no bodybuilder but the doctor laughed me out of the surgery when I went there crying 'I'm nearly obese, help me'. He proded me, showed me it was muscle and sent me on my merry way.

Starve me senseless and I'll never be Kate Moss, but a BMI of 29.5 doesn't mean I'm a walking pile of fatty tissue either! Those girls needed GOk-king! (And generally I don't like the guy!)

I do agree with that. I think most BMI calculators do say they aren't suitable for people like athletes etc. My brother-in-law's BMI is well over 30, and he isn't in the slightest bit fat. He just spends a lot of time in the gym- his body is a temple too!

Whether or not these contestants get their BMI below 25 though, I think most of them will benefit from the show. Most of them had really poor fitness levels, so I doubt it's muscle that's the problem at the moment.