Nope it would work that way. Lots of bitter jealous women (or hormonal teenage girls) would have voted pretty model-type women out of the competition in an attempt to save their hunky/cute male celebs.

I think that plan would backfire. Brendan & Lisa have topped the 'least favourite' poll on here for many weeks now.

You'd lose the likes of them pretty fast if we used the proposed voting strategy.

But doesn't that work this way the voting is done - otherwise why did Zoe Ball, Louisa Lytton, Emma Bunton all not get further than they did.

But then how did Alesha win? She was a young, beautiful girl....

You also have to think of the pros. Brendan (Cat Balou avert your eyes at this point!) has not endeared himself to many viewers who would quite happily pick up the phone to vote him off.

True, but I think Alesha won because she had a fab-u-lous relationship with Matthew and a wonderful personality.

However, Emma and Louisa were up against Mark and Karen who also had a great dancing relationship in addition to the Ramps looks (luckily for Matt Dawson he had the journey to keep him going). Zoe had to contend with the double whammy of Colin Jackson (and his wide appeal) and the journey of Darren Gough.

The GBP (myself included) will each year see something in a couple that they feel is deserving. Popularity can make the voting process feel uncomfortable for those who don't have the spark that galvanises the public into voting - it must have been so demoralising for Heather knowing that she has been producing a better end product than others, but not to have the support she could have expected.

I suspect doing it that way around will introduce its own problems and it sounds rather distasteful to ask the public to vote negatively.

I haven't made any attempt to think it through, but I think I'd like to see the bottom two or three decided by the judges and any public vote being used to decide which one or two is/are saved. That way it would be clear that the person(s) with the most votes are the 'winners' instead of the current rather messy situation.

But chances are that still wouldn't have meant that John was. It wasn't an either/or Rachel/John for the second dance off place situation. John seemingly polled enough in the phone votes to mean that a number of other couples ended up there before him - even if Rachel didn't.

Out of curiosity is that the main issue - not that John wasn't in the dance off, but that Rachel was? In which case it could be a good thing for her by galvanising her supporters into telephone action.

In principle this would be a good idea, but I don't think that we could trust the judges to rank the dancers fairly, knowing that we could vote them out (does that make sense? ) I guess what I am trying to say is that they would then be in a position to choose the finalists. Personally, I think that would be giving them too much power

No, I agree with that.
All the judges would do would be to make sure the scores were jiffled enough to get the ones they wanted in the vote off.

I totally agree with you...typical case in point is Lisa on Saturday. She looked beautiful, but on closer inspection her footwork wasn't that great, also the gapping between her and Brendan was quite wide. No mention of that - and its week 8! This year I have no allegiance, which is just as well, as I bankrolled myself last year This year I actually enjoy the "sunday" show with the pro dances more than the blebs.

I voted for Heather and Brian so many times over the past weeks, I'll probably be on cheese on toast and tap water all over Christmas!

I agree with every single world Who Me? said. It's the judges fault Heather found herself in the dance-off so many times. They always seemed to over-exaggerate her mistakes and, on the rare occassions they praised her, the praise was given grudgingly. When Cherie, Christine, Jodie and Austin performed less than brilliant dances, the judges rather than give them a savage mauling simply dismissed their performance with trite comments such as "it wasn't your dance". The judges have lost the ability to judge accurately, fairly and objectively. After week one, they knew who they wanted in the final and weren't prepared to give the others a chance to improve. You've only got to look at Arlene on Friday's ITT waxing lyrical about Tom, Austin and Cherie whilst not bothering to muster any enthusiasm whatsover for the other couples.

Len keeps moaning about John Sargent, but wasn't he the one who a few weeks back said that if he was watching from home, he'd be voting for him? And why is Len head judge when his marks are so erratic?

If the judges wanted to choose the finalists they could pretty much do that already simply by ranking them highest every week. It takes some pretty freakish voting to get the judges' leaders into the dance-off.

There are an awful lot of competitions and sports out there that depend entirely, or partially, on marks from a panel of judges so SCD really ought to be able to cope.

Duplicate Post Deleted.
Last edited by grunson : 10-11-2008 at 23:15

Well I nearly went bankrupt voting for Gethin and Camilla! Have not made the same mistake this year - yet!

Very good points.

Thats right because you are voting on an applicable criteria - dancers you like, dancing in ways you like. The outcome was also logical as Emma was the better dancer and Stephanie was limited and that gets reflected in the public vote. Arguably Louisa at her best was better than Matt and like emma deserved to go further, but there's no clear reason why she wasn't about where she was in the order of departures.

Voting for John because he is bad or to annoy the judges is not an appropriate criteria - its not fair on people who joined up and are trying hard in adancing competition and it ensures that the competition is distorted - some people go much to early, otehrs are demoralised and we may never get to see the best competition in the final. Its impossible to call what he does dancing and in recent weeks it hasn't even been comic dancing - just shuffling. Its like giving the slow student who messes about in class the form prize for being funny, naughty and disruptive or awarding the race to the competitor who crawls in last.

I reckon the BBC should give up on having older (and fatter) contestants in SCD. However, I don't know how they find out that a contestant has two left feet (a la Kate Garroway/Fiona Phillips/Carol Vorderman.)

Alesha was better than her males by a larger margin though . They were inconsistent. Gethin had the better journey story of the males and didn't make the final. Alesha's stronger opposition - Kelly and possibly Gabby went early. Then there's Alesha. She's bubbly but she's also non threatening. She's not obviously middle class or working class. She's not overly successful/wealthy. The judges don't mark her out as their best dancer from early on so she doesn't get labelled as a favourite. They also don't later on have to try and keep her out of the last two on teh public vote and make her look more like their favourite.


Agree you could get silly results if people took against a pro or celeb on strange grounds. You could lose key people who are popular with 40% of the public bit disliked by more people than dislike otehr dancers who have 5% support. The idea would be that more people would vote to evict John than would vote for Heather or Rachel but after getting rid of the votes. obvious cases it would be open to strange . It would get rid of the dire dancers who hang on and on making other people go early but it could lead to dire results later on.

As the public vote no longer has any charity connection I might get rid of it completely if it keeps on distorting things before the final . You could have some other panel decide who goes from the judges choice or let the judges decide from theirs. The audience would be dificult as it could be packed, the other pros and celebs could do it as per Fame Academy or you could have someone else do it - past contestants, pros, celebs.........Won't happen though as the public vote provides them with a second cheap show.

Judgeing by this forum thats a bad thing as 'smug' Rachel, Austin, Tom and Cherie would be in the dance off every week.

Don't know about contraversial Sid.

You actually made a lot more sense than a lot of posts on some other forums (or should that be fora?)

Cheers Mimi

I felt what I said was slightly accusatory, but valid.

Are there any more people out there who are sad to see Heather go, but realise that after John, she was probably the celeb who most deserved to be kicked off the show?

I was a fan of Heather's and was just waiting for her to deliver something that was as attractive as her first week salsa, but it never really happened again after that, even in the great VW she and Brian put together.

Of all the celebs left in apart from John, Heather was in the unfortunate position of having the least natural ability and making the smallest improvement from her starting position. by that logic, she wasn't likely to get any better and it was definitely her time to go if John wasn't in the equation.