Huh, the Blackpool Tower Ballroom is a lot smaller than I expected.

I went to Blackpool and all I got was this cursed afro wig.

The return to Blackpool got all of our pros thinking and reminiscing about their glory days as junior ballroom dancers – when they didn’t have to live in permanent fear of a sprained ankle ruining your entire career, forcing them to live off however much they make from those teeth whitening sponsorships on Instagram.
All of this did of course mean we were treated to some Baby Ballroom Family Photos, highlights include Kai in a costume that feels like someone dressing up as Sexy Abraham Lincoln for Halloween

Neil being The Neil

and of course Nancy’s Bebo profile photo from 2008

I can only imagine the arguments over shared Luv and Top Sixteens were that much more furious and important within the Competitive Ballroom World than they already were in your standard British public school – friendships ended, Evanescence lyrics were posted, social standings fell. If you think social media is toxic now, you know nothing.

But nobody was thinking harder than Amy who was being hit by the existential freight train that is Age

well guess what Amy? For one night only, you can come face to face with the crushing weight of your own mortality and warn yourself about your Annus Horribilis, 2018

and you’ll never guess which temporally adrift wizard was responsible for putting this into motion…

Kai Widdrington, wanted intergalactic time criminal strikes again!

I was hoping that everyone would get to come face to face with their Baby Ballroom Doppelgangers, sadly we just got these two very cute dancers. And despite the whole thing being a very sentimental dance to Sam Ryder singing You’re The Voice, complete with mandatory solo on a guitar that he seems to just summon from the ether like he’s Syaoran from Cardcaptor Sakura

Katya was careening around that ballroom like the heroine in a 1930s horror movie running away from a vampire

obviously said Vampire was Neil

this was all just one of his many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many extremely not funny pranks that makes living with him sound like the most miserable existence imaginable

(he also slathered Cameron in shower gel while he slept)

(he also wrapped Amy’s car in clingfilm)

I would simply not file a police report if Neil Jones, aged 40, ever mysteriously went missing – you can do it Amy and Kai, you can get away with a little murder just this once.

And of course the only way to finish off a routine about coming face to face with your younger, more sparkly-eyed selves, was what felt like a nod to Fight Club

now there’s an absolutely bonkers Movie Week routine reserved for only the edgelordiest of comedians.

They continue to really not do enough with the backstage shenanigans – where’s the footage of Vito and Fleur getting absolutely blasted on Red Bull? Dianne standing outside Craig’s dressing room with an axe to grind? Hamza trying to feed Tess frozen whole mice and releasing Claudia back into the wild?

she’s currently on her way back to Africa in a medium-sized Claudia Winkleman-shaped box and Tess is safe in a terrarium with a reptile collector who goes by the name SnakeCharmer_Dez on Reddit.

The first round of the Monkseal memorial Safety Sex Face Gallery, and we seem to have reached a point in the competition where even Hamza is beginning to sweat a little bit

and the first couple in the Dance Off were of course Molly and Carlos – a seeming inevitability given the three-way 35 point pileup in the middle of the leaderboard

the advice to Molly is mostly quite pat because they’re just buying time while Johannes desperately tries to pop Ellie’s eyes back into their sockets so once that was taken care of, Molly and Carlos have to run backstage to stop the prop department from locking someone inside the Big Band Bandstand Boogie Bandstand for the sacrificial bandstand burning.
Up with Claudia, Ellie has to shout out her offshore vote farming sweatshop that has a chokehold on the competition while Hamza talks about his blissful social media free lifestyle – he doesn’t even know who Elon Musk is – he got very excited because he thought a new species of Tundra-dwelling rodent had been discovered and there was new information to add to his Animal Pop Quizzes that Jowita is periodically forced to take part in or Hamza won’t practice his fleckerls

Good job Jowita! That’s 15 minutes of uninterrupted training time next week! As a warning, brush up on your seal facts.

Fleur and Vito might need to set up a similar system, not because of Fleur but because apparently Vito and her husband, Marcel, are late night text buddies

all I’m going to say is that Dancing With The Stars: Poland has Threesome Week in which the couples are joined on the dancefloor by one of the celebrity’s family members – it’s not too late to try to make up for the lack of an Avant Garde Sex Dungeon Blackpool Paso, guys. Do it for Marcel. Do it for us. Do it for the YouTube clout.

They’re also making sure they got every penny’s worth out of Sam Ryder with him performing the mid-show song as well, this one being his breakup song accompanied by Katya and Giovanni – Katya lipsyncing for her life and feeling every single emotion

with the other couple being Neil (subtle, guys) and Jowita during which Neil did this and it’s an image that has needlessly burnt itself into my brain

it’s not possible to do a static thrust, but Neil somehow made it possible.

And of course the whole thing ends and Sam Ryder going from wavering waif-like vocals that would put most John Lewis adverts to shame to gleefully waving to the audience like none of it had ever happened

that’s our boy!

The Second round of Safety Sex-facing!

thus leaving Tyler & Dianne and Kym & Graziano in the potential lurch, with Aston Merrygold’s Bad Luck Afro striking again

Craig isn’t allowed anywhere near the Tyler West Advice Pool and while Dianne goes backstage to shovel some coal into The Nouveau Porn Train, we learn that Kym and Graziano are going to be doing a Couple’s Choice to I Feel For You by Chaka Khan…

or at least they were. Unfortunately Kym has tested positive for Covid-19 and won’t be dancing this weekend. It’ll be interesting to see how it affects the result because I’m not sure a disco-funk Couple’s Choice sounded like a vote getting routine and I expect she’d have been up against either Molly or Fleur in the Dance Off – so will it be A Bottom 2 Goddess Showdown For The Ages or has the skin of Ellie and Johannes’s teeth finally sloughed off?

As for the dance off, the camera team at least managed to redeem themselves and we weren’t treated to any crash-zooming jump scares in the middle of Molly’s Jive, which also happened to confirm that the framing of this shot wasn’t a mistake and it was a very purposeful decision to cut Molly completely out of frame

I really thought the new contract hire crane operator just didn’t know which one Molly was.
It was by far the most exciting Dance Off so far and very much felt like it could have gone either way, especially considering they were both in the 3 couple pile-up in the middle of the leaderboard. It was also the first time we had to go to Shirley for an opinion (never forget how if this had happened in Movies Week, Fleur would have gone out second) as Craig and Motsi opted for Molly while Anton threw his vote behind Tyler… for reasons

I personally thought Tyler’s was the better performance and I would have saved him, but Shirley put her deciding weight behind Molly and so Tyler becomes the second celebrity to be scuppered by an afro wig

the ghosts of Ed and Lorraine Warren will be around to pick it up on Wednesday.

And so, we’re down to 7 couples

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