Bullying claims means Strictly has lost its sparkle - but I'll still be tuning in

The sequins seem to be flying off the Strictly Come Dancing juggernaut this week as more and more celebrities seem to be forgetting that they ‘made a friend for life’ with their dance partner and revealing that they were bullied, bruised and broken following the competition to win the glitterball trophy, writes Sarah Newton.

The show has been gracing our screens for 20 years and has been as synonymous with the run-up to Christmas as going into the loft to retrieve your deccies.

Beginning when the evenings are still long in September, as the Saturday nights draw in entire families sit down together to see the sparkle and spangle, the heel leads, the unwanted gapping and to collectively wonder what a fleckle might actually look like.

So, it seems inconceivable that the Strictly Come Dancing scandal could see off the show, but the complaints have been as damning as a Craig Revel Horwood comment after an Ann Widdicombe routine.

Barely a day has gone by in the last fortnight without one of the former contestants putting the (stiletto) boot in, but the BBC has been fairly tight lipped in response.

Odds lengthen on show's survival

There has been a statement about providing chaperones in the training rooms and at least two dancers won’t be gracing the ballroom this year – Giovanni and Graziano have been given the chop – but it feels very much like the glitterball is running away from the Beeb.

Of course, it seems hugely unlikely that a show which sees 6.6m viewers tuning in every week will be axed, but the bookies have slashed the odds to just 10/1 that the 2024 series does not go ahead as planned.

As far as PR disasters go, this one is enormous. Strictly has always been sold to us as the ultimate escape, no matter what is going on in the outside world Strictly will cha-cha-cha as if nothing has happened.

For 90 minutes (or sometimes three days at the beginning of the series), the viewer is invited into a feathery, sequinned universe, which doubtless smells of fake tan and aftershave, where there is no cost of living crisis, no fears over climate change or whether Trump will win the Presidential race. The gravest concern is whether Shirley will go too early (inevitably) with her number 10 paddle.

Even scenery changes are like magic

We don’t see the army of stagehands operating with military precision to change the sets between dances – we simply take it for granted that a park bench and a lamppost have magically appeared during a VT break.

The same is true of the live band and the singers, able to perform Puccini one minute, Wham! the next. The costume team make bespoke outfits week after week, thinking nothing of gluing 2,500 sequins on to a single dress by hand. And the contestants shimmy their way across the dancefloor in a way that we previously thought inconceivable.

And this is why the Strictly Scandal is so damaging. Some of that magical gloss has lost its shine now we know that the professionals potentially get those polished performances from their partners by less-than-perfect means.

Until recently, the only controversy the show faced was usually reserved to what has become known as “the?Strictly?curse”, where contestants end up leaving their own partners having grown increasingly ‘close’ to their dance partner.

But it was clear there was no chance of that in Amanda Abingdon’s case – she left the show after just five weeks and in January reports of behind-the-scenes bullting started to surface.

More recently, Zara McDermott has come forward to describe her treatment in the training room, with Steve Backshall and Will Bayley making their own accusations this week.

No BBC apology - until the men complained

Tellingly, the director of the BBC didn’t come forward with an apology until the two male contestants joined the conversation and several weeks after the scandal first started making headlines. It remains to be seen if it’s too little, too late and I wouldn’t be surprised if the show faces something of a reboot – new judges, presenters or professionals – as the show attempts to draw a line in the sand.

It's clear that the BBC has failed to score a perfect 10 in its handling of this crisis. But it would be a disaster dahling if the show was scrapped. There have been so many memorable moments – from Rose Ailing-Ellis’s spine-tingling silent symphony to Jay McGuiness performing a Pulp Fiction-inspired routine.

Who can forget Len Goodman describing Ann Widecombe being dragged across the floor as being like a motorway crash ‘you don’t really want to watch, but you can’t help yourself’?

Or finding out that Bill Bayley was rather more twinkle-toed than we expected when he performed to Rappers Delight?

There is no doubt that Strictly has lost some of its sparkle and it’s all been proof that there IS such a thing as bad publicity. But I for one will be tuning in – if only to find out what a fleckle actually is this year.

Keeeeeeeep Dancing!