Strictly Come Dancing
BBC 1
Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two
BBC 2
This Week
BBC 1
Have I Got News For You
BBC 1
Newsnight Review
BBC 2
NUMBER 10 Downing Street sent him a text message expressing the Prime Minister’s support. A leader in The Times encouraged him to go all the way. The Tory Whips’ office declared it a matter of duty to pick up the phone and vote for him. But when Peter Mandelson said: “I envy you,” warning bells began to jangle inside the head of retired political correspondent John Sergeant. “I said to myself, now may be the time to go”, he told Claudia Winkleman on Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two, “the time to leave the party is before the fight starts.” The old boy may have made a nation laugh attempting to become a ballroom dancer in the arms of a Marilyn Monroe lookalike, but when the prince of darkness starts to take an interest it’s time to stock up on garlic and head for the hills.
Once Sergeant had made up his mind to step down from competing in Strictly Come Dancing, the vote-for-your-favourite celebrity dance contest, all hell broke loose. Flashbulbs popped at a hastily-convened BBC press conference. If wayward viewers voted him on to the contest final, he confessed, better dancers than he would be voted off to make room. Sounding increasingly like a starlet making an Oscar acceptance speech, he spoke of his hopes and fears, his agonies and ecstasies. Meanwhile, the internet and BBC switchboard lit up with thousands of irate Sergeant fans, incensed that their candidate had been “forced out” by Len Goodman and his fellow dance judges, the BBC and/or Sergeant’s sequin-clad rivals. Newspaper headlines, both tabloid and broadsheet, gleefully poured petrol on the flames.
Soon BBC current affairs programmes were falling over each other in the rush to pass comment, thrilled to be able to conflate ballroom dancing and politics at long last. This Week gave itself over to a Strictly Come Dancing theme. Newsnight Review earnestly discussed the matter, Kirsty Walk wondering: “Is it all over for the TV talent show genre or is it just being subverted?” On Have I Got News For You, comic Frank Skinner talked of Sergeant’s hubris, comparing him to Joan of Arc. All the pundits agreed – John Sergeant should never have left. The show took itself far too seriously. It was mere entertainment and could hardly call itself a dance competition.
Well, I hate to come over all Len Goodman about this, but I cannot agree with my fellow judges. It is a dance competition and I’m delighted that it takes itself far too seriously. For a kitsch-lover and sad lifelong fan of parent show Come Dancing like me, that is half the fun of watching it. Why shouldn’t rugby players and soap actors fight to the death to win a glitter-ball trophy? It’s no more absurd than a bunch of men kicking a football –an entertainment which our entire society colludes to treat with bizarre reverence. Why is a ballroom dancing contest any more ridiculous than the judging of the Booker or Turner prizes? The quickstep is a skill, it takes effort and it’s just as vaguely creative.
What does disturb me is the hysterical way we have all latched onto this, just as we did with the recent Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross fiasco. As Claudia Winkleman asked: “Have we all gone raving mad?” Well, yes, I think we have. The BBC clearly aims to exploit this sequin storm for weeks to come, boosting the show’s viewing figures and selling more tickets for the upcoming live tour. And, as Michael Portillo pointed out, for the politicians it makes a marvellous distraction from our economic crisis, while conning us that “subverting” a television talent show compensates for having no one worth voting for at general elections.
Helen Chappell
