Hello stakers! How have you been coping with the Strictly dearth? Don’t worry, I feel your pain too. Course, the Christmas special had its moments - not least Ronni Ancona coming across as an arrogant, sulky madam, before revealing herself as a rubbish dancer (ha!), and John Barrowman out-gaying even himself. But it just wasn’t quite the same as the series and that special fourteen week ‘journey’, was it? *sigh*. However, I went to see the live show with Louise on Friday night – and BOY WAS IT AWESOME! Yes, yes it was. FAB-U-ETC. I’ve gone a bit blog overboard on it, but bear with me, if you wish. Seriously, you don’t have to read it. I warn you now – it’s long. Maybe get a cuppa first, eh?
Anyway, to business – we’ll start with the line-up. It was mainly players from this year: Mattiona, PamJam, Patsy/Robin, Tiny Tina/Jared and Jimi Mistry, but dancing with Kristina rather than Flavia. And alongside that lot, were former finalist Colin Jackson, dancing with Ola not Erin, and last year’s Ricky Nipple/Natalie Lowe, who so clearly still haven’t got over losing out to Chris Hollins, and probably never will. My God – Whittle’s stench of arrogance and competitiveness and immodesty was just too much. And yet he got the second biggest cheers after Matt. I booed him, obviously. Kartem were also supposed to dance, but were both ill. I probably whispered ‘sex injury’ a little too loudly when that was announced - not sure how the couple seated next to us (the Daily Telegraph’s finest) took it. Oh well. They knew it was true.
Hosting duties were courtesy of Zoe Ball (another former finalist), who came on and did a slinky little dance routine with the male pros. She was wearing the BEST Strictly dress – floor length with a slit, tight (but not too tight – take note Daly), long sleeved/high necked/backless and made ENTIRELY of black shimmering sequins – whichever sewing mistress lost her fingers making it, it was worth it. And given that Zoe is nineteen foot tall, she looked incredible. In the second half, ZoBell appeared wearing a blood red version of the same dress, which I’m fairly sure she must have mugged a drag queen to get. Also incredible – though maybe not quite in the same way.
Len, Bruno and Craig were on judging duties, and though Dave Arch wasn’t in evidence, his wonderful orchestra were, including everyone’s favourite behatted bassist, Trevor. Interestingly, it was Len who shone in the live show – he was very funny indeed and made me ‘lol’ on a number of occasions. For example, Bruno was telling one of the male celebs (Jimi, I think) that he needed to tighten up his backside during the paso doble, so should try practising with a pound coin clenched between his buttocks – ew, but also excellent advice and so far, so Bruno. Then Len took over and agreed with the Tonioli advice, proclaiming “except in my day it was a threepenny bit, then I upgraded to half a crown.” Boom boom. No, honestly, it was very funny indeed – but perhaps you had to be there.
The format was much the same as the real show – each couple danced, got their comments from the judges, Zoe-Tess conducted an awkward interview, cue scores/applause. Goodman’s got a new catchphrase to add to “se-VEN” which is “From Len, A TEN.” Rhyming = always good.
First up was Colin Jackson, who was really quite disappointing – very stiff and no hip action whatsoever. I remember him being good back in the day, and I even thought he would win series 3, before he and Erin fell at the last hurdle (GEDDIT!?!?!??!?!), with that tacky show dance, where they pranced around in tuxes with be-ballgowned lady muppets (literally) strapped to their persons. Remember? Awful. What was Miss Whiplash thinking? (Probably Anton suggested that idea…) Anyway, on the upside (literally) Colin’s bottom is still extraordinarily pert – proper shelf.
Dancing aside, Colin and Ola’s performance did set up a moment of comedy gold. After Colin’s bottom had performed a spritely charcharcharrrr, Bruno told him off for not being sufficiently swivelly-hipped, and – being Bruno – proceeded to actively demonstrate how swivelly hip action should look and performed a series of pelvic thrusts into the camera, of which we all got a good close-up on the giant screens – with Bruno utterly oblivious to the fact that his flies were open. (36 inches and all that.) Fortunately though, Jimi Mistry, up next, had noticed that the Italian was flying low and took great delight in telling Bruno about his wardrobe malfunction. HOW WE LAUGHED! Seriously – it was brilliant, and not least because I have never seen Bruno look so mortified. (In fact I’m sure we were all convinced that Bruno didn’t have an embarrassed bone in his body. Oh dear, let’s swiftly move on from the image of any kind of bone in Bruno’s body. Ahem.) Anyway, Bruno looked down at his fly, mouthed ‘it’s true’ at the camera and proceeded to go bright red and fan his face with his hand, hysterically giggling away, then ducking under the desk in embarrassment. Craig, Len and Zoe Ball were openly pissing themselves – Craig was completely unable to speak he was laughing so hard. Needless to say, it was the highlight of the highlights and even kept Bruno calm for two or three dances, though he did end up doing a Louie Spence leg stretch while sitting on the desk – it’s no surprise that large-scale public humiliation won’t keep that man down for long.
As for the others, Tina and Jared are absolutely tiny and that’s all you need to know about them. (Seriously, so tiny it defied belief! Tina came across well, though, and Len called her Tina Teaspoon, which was utterly adorable/hilarious.) Jimi Mistry, I’m sad to say, remains fairly rubbish – a bit like Craig Kelly before him, he seems to think he’s actually quite good and the judges are being a bit unfair when they slate him – but in a more likeable way that Craig K. However, his Thriller paso was noteworthy, for Kristina’s outfit; a cape-skirt and sequined corset. As Lou commented, we’d never seen so much glitter-boob surface area – incredible.
The winner was decided by audience vote and I nearly texted my 25p’s worth of support to Patsy and Robin – WHO WAS WEARING THE POO SUIT!!! Whoop whoop! Yesssss. Imagine the scene – a sleeveless brown mancatsuit, slashed to the navel, with Robin’s giant pecs busting out of the pooey top half. That man’s wardrobe is a triumph! I’ll be gutted if he doesn’t return. The odd thing about Robin (apart from his face in general, of course) is that he’s so butch and gym bunny muscle-y that he actually looks like he’s got a pot belly. (Or maybe he’s got a pot belly?) Anyway, Pats and Bobby did that gorrrrrrrrrrrgeous waltz from the series that I lurrrrrrrrrved and it totally charmed me again.
Wanna know what DIDN’T charm me? Yes, that’s right. Nipple. Get over it, Ricky. Team Cola all the way! And surprise surprise, that arrogance overload meant that Ricky wasn’t sufficiently popular to win the live show either. ALTHOUGH, I will concede that he was really, really competent and probably turned in the best performance of the evening (yes, that surprised me too). It was an Argentine Tango (and it’s well documented that I’m a sucker for the AT), which started out, typical Lowe/Nipple style, all technique and no heart, but then somewhere along the way they found some passion and he threw her around a bit in a really tense and exciting way. So bravo to them – that was against the odds really (seeing as I loathe the pair of them). Still glad they didn’t win though – their other dance did nothing for me.
I have to say though, my feelings for Natalie wavered through the night. Readers, I nearly ended up liking her! Crazy talk. Basically, at the end, after a big old messy but fun group dance, when the celebs and pros were waving goodbye, shimmying and blowing kisses to the crowd, Natalie jumped over the barriers in front of us and beckoned to a little girl to come over for a hug – which was very sweet indeed and, despite her terrifying glare of RUTHLESS AMBITION, she seemed genuinely happy to greet and hug that little girl – and she totally didn’t have to. BUT THEN, just as I was relenting that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t this dead-eyed, desperate, LOOKATMELOOKATME fembot, the ‘real’ Natalie reappeared - the lights were dimming and all the dancers were leaving the stage, and Natalie just ‘happened’ to find herself on the wrong side of the arena and had to run the whole of the dancefloor to get to the exit – drawing everyone’s attention to her and her amazing endless legs – and trying to look modest and embarrassed (soooo faux), but in fact coming across as utterly delighted with herself. AS USUAL. You nearly fooled me, Lowe!
God I’d miss her if she left.
PamJam, oh PamJam – you were totally my favourites. Partly because they also did an Argentine Tango – the one that they would have performed in the Strictly final, had they not been rudely kicked off in third place. Their AT was several shades of awesome and they also did that sentimental but GORRRgeous waltz apparently based on the film Ghost (though they’d sadly failed to add the ghost-sticks-head-through-train scene). And though they were the best for me, it was Mattiona wot won it – apparently they’ve been winning every night of the tour. And it’s true that Matt was very good, if slightly boring. And still channelling the spirit of Fonzie and his thumbs. I’d have been really curious to see how Kartem would have fared though, if they hadn’t been sex-injured. But Matt did his back flips, so I was happy to see him crowned. Aliona’s choreography remains mental and her costumes remain slutsville, which is good.
Two other events of note that I’ve saved til last, as I was half hoping they’d have auto-wiped themselves from my memory. Brace yourselves. The half time entertainment was… well…. It was under the British Under-16s Latin Dance Troupe. I know. Wrong. But also, really very good at dancing. The main disturbance is the fact that the girls look about 22 and the boys look 12. Still, it’s quite hilarious to think that that was once James Jordan and Vinthent! Jared, of course, is still 12, so that should give you an idea.
The second event. Well, Widdecombe’s return. Oh yes. But Widders wasn’t dancing with Anton (he’s above the live show) and was instead partnered with Craig Revel Horwood himself. Wowsers. As you can imagine, it was a memorable performance. She came on to the dulcet sounds of My Heart Will Go On (who could forget her Titantic rumba?) and stomped around the stage a bit looking lost and calling ‘Annnnnnnnnton’, before Craig appeared and helped her through her Charleston – you could see that he was having trouble with the lifts, as there was some definite Revel-Horwood gurning going on. Seriously, credit to Anton for always looking so serene when he ‘effortlessly’ picked Ann up (or possibly credit to his botox administrator?). Anyway, I have to admit that both Lou and I chuckled merrily throughout the performance – in our defence we were probably high on hairspray fumes. And we’d had a cider each.
So there you have it folks. Truly good stuff throughout. And only, what, eight months to go before it all kicks off again! Hooray! Thank God Eurovision is fast approaching and will dull the lack of Strictly pain. (Blue though?!! Seriously, what? BLUE?? Etc.)
Byeeee xxx
