They’re really not being subtle about Neil anymore.

I’ve seen a lot in my life. But this was special.

Just to avoid confusion I’m kicking off the recap of Week 1 with the Launch Show group routine because it was more interesting (and I’d already written it before giving up on recapping the Launch Show because there’s only so much to be mined from 15 incredibly pat interviews.)

Well, we got here. Through a smoky cloud of PR disasters that ripped through the Italian populace with the ferocity of Mount Vesuvius, we have arrived. BUT DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT! LOOK, IT’S ALJAZ! HE’S NEW AND SHINY AGAIN! (and definitely not flagging after every group number with the same fear in his eyes as a border collie that knows what “behind the shed” means)

he has of course found himself in the role of The Anton, another job on this show that Neil couldn’t even keep down for more than 1 series

and the role of The Anton, as ever, is to make sure everyone gets to the studio for the Strictly Launch Show, so it’s all aboard The Magic Fool Bus

the train would have been quicker, but it’s probably for the best that we don’t harken back to any previous controversies and Strictly doesn’t have the best SEO when it comes to trains

not that a bus furnished with neon zebra print is really beating any travelling sex pest allegations

the only thing missing for this to be its own portable PornHub category is a water bed, $500 in 10 dollar notes and a twink in an outfit that counts as fetish gear to *someone*

ok, we’ve got ourselves a movie!

But then tragedy! (And definitely not a visual metaphor…) The happy, jolly vehicle that farts glitter everywhere it goes

is broken down because of a rusty, fume spewing radiator

I really thought that if you know at least 10% of the audience is watching while rubbing their knees in the hopes TessBot goes full Skynet and starts screaming “GIOVANNI DID NOTHING WRONG!” while chewing her way through the studio with her new titanium veneers, you would do ANYTHING not to give people opportunities for car crash jokes.
Even though they didn’t get their Tessminator moment, they’ve always got Channel 5’s incredibly classy post-Strictly scheduling because someone put 50p in the perpetually bitter animatronic known as James Jordan

I didn’t watch it, I just assume he was part of it because Channel 5 clip shows are to reality TV hasbeens as flames are to moths.

Back to our stranded dancers, who all emerge from the bus like they’ve been transported to a zombie apocalypse – again, DEFINITELY NOT A VISUAL METAPHOR

and if you’re wondering who’s dying first, it’s definitely Nikita

I know he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and the only thing happening behind those eyes is a cymbal clapping monkey conditioning its hair but you didn’t have to say it to his face, Nadiya!

Luckily there’s a medium sized phonebooth nearby, and that Neil was on hand to show 30 and 31 year old Jowita and Carlos (who definitely grew up with rotary phones, they’re literally the same age as me COME ON!) how to use it

Dianne fumes from the sidelines as she watches her Faux Zoomer title being stolen from her. It’s ok Dianne, they can take your skibidi toilet and your chikibamboni but they can never take your TikTok clout.

Salvation was on hand, and we found out that Tess Daly doesn’t get kept in the broom cupboard for the other two thirds of the year. Instead she’s been equipped with phone answering capabilities at Dave Arch’s mechanic workshop

which I imagine doubles up as his mad scientist laboratory where he works out the most diabolical ways he can murder the songs of the 80s. And if the bus wasn’t porn adjacent enough, it took all of 3 seconds of being in this sparsely verisimilar garage before Gorka went full Grease Monkey 4: Wrench Me, Daddy

he’s had his year off. The abs are out, his baby oil budget is replenished and he’s putting effort in again.

So with everyone pitching in and repairing the truck through the medium of a 2001: A Space Odyssey reference (I think?)

they could FINALLY get to the studio where I realised the name of the bus was BRUCIE

we never found out the name of the radiator that tried to ruin everyone’s fun.

And now we can get on with the dances!

Nick Knowles & Luba Mushtuk
Jive / We Built This City – Starship

For the second year in a row, Luba has the honour (???) of kicking off the series with her default setting man in tow

they’re getting Nick Knowles stomping through a jive like someone strapped a pair of jackhammers to his shins over and done with as quickly as possible. And because this is Strictly, it’s obviously a Occupational Work Experience Jive with Nick playing the role of the chartered surveyor nobody ever hires on Homes Under The Hammer

and Luba fulfilling the role of Laurence Llewelyn Bowen because they still haven’t managed to trick him into signing up for this show

but Luba bursting through a paper door like a pair of “best-friends-who-definitely-aren’t-lesbians-who-are-about-to-hate-what-Linda-Barker-has-done-to-their-living-room” on an episode of Changing Rooms in 2001 wasn’t the strangest reveal of this dance, instead that goes to Nick revealing from high vis to… higher vis

and ordinarily making a week 1 jive anymore visible than it has to be would feel like a violation of the Geneva Conventions but this… wasn’t unwatchably awful? Sure, it hit all of the ameture jive tropes like kick balling across the stage like a sprite in an 80s Super Mario game

he’s moving with such determination and yet… going nowhere

Then more than a few small chunks of the whole thing felt a bit like he was bobbing around like a child determined to win a game of musical statues or like you’d been cornered by your slightly drunk uncle at a wedding during the DJ’s 5th time playing Jailhouse Rock

but I was never hiding behind my own hands and if a volunteer performed this with their mop to entertain the crowd while they swept the sweat off the indoor volleyball court at the Olympics, I’d give them a round of applause and hope for a RayGun collab

I hope it at least crossed the minds of the Strictly producers to stunt cast B-girl RayGun (SHE DID NOTHING WRONG) but they decided against it because it’s the Year of The Inoffensive Nice Guys to remind us this is a happy show covered in glitter where nothing bad ever happens…

NO DON’T LOOK AT PAUL MERSON’S WIKIPEDIA PAGE! STOP SCROLLING! NO DON’T CLICK THE PERSONAL LIFE SEGMENT! THESE ARE NOT THE DROIDS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR!
Meanwhile, in America

Notability: Con Artist is wild.

As for the judging, it was the standard “we don’t want to score anyone below a 5 so we’ll overpraise you” – I would like Shirley to defend her claim there were zero mistakes in this routine in a court of law. And Craig stumbled over a joke about the routine being heavier than a Rolled Steel Joist that he was very clearly reading off a piece of paper after having spent the entire routine frantically googling construction terminology

it’s fine to be distracted, Shirley spent all of Pete Wicks’s paso doble googling “Who is Pete Wicks?” and is still none the wiser.

Nick did seem to forget that he’s meant to have a whole post-critique Claudia interview while they oil change TessBot’s brain gears and let Anton work out how to use a remote control. The moment Tess allowed a single second of dead air to fill the studio, Nick’s Lottery Gameshow Host genes kicked into overdrive and he filled it with the sort of gabbering that only a man who has had to cover for a pair of contestants spending too long debating where they know the name Shayne Ward from is capable of

leaving everyone to sort of just stare at him in the hopes he would shut up eventually because they’re working to a very tight schedule – the show may feel like it just goes on and on and on and on and on and on with no care for how precious our mortal lives are but Tess does only have 3 hours of battery life

Luba trying to psychically shut him up while Tess watches someone steal her job on live television and Motsi thinks “I didn’t ask a question, why is he talking at me?” <3

They did eventually manage to shepherd him upstairs to shut him up through the medium of birthday cake

and I have never seen anyone in a caftan move as fast as Claudia running away from Nick’s cake slathered hug

THAT’S £700 OF PREMIUM CASHMERE, DON’T YOU DARE!

Nobody told Craig it was Nick’s birthday

SCORES:
Craig: 3
Motsi: 5
Shirley: 5
Anton: 5
TOTAL: 18

Sam Quek & Nikita Kuzmin
Foxtrot / Where Did Our Love Go? – The Supremes

Well, it didn’t take long for them to get to the first Office HR Nightmare themed routine of the series

I don’t quite know what Quek and Partners Inc does or why they require quite that many clocks and global offices

but they might want to talk with their “and partners” about what they wear around the workplace

if you want to own Nikita’s shirt with the big space bazongas, it’s currently on an incredibly confusing sale

which is only a moderately more confusing approach to numbers than the scoring for Sam’s well-above-average week 1 Foxtrot. Everyone gave her great critiques and highly praised her potential with even Craig giving her a 6

so what you would expect to follow would be a string of 6s and Anton probably throwing a 7 at it because it’s a foxtrot with visible ankles and that’s what he uses a private browser for. Then…

I would like to know what specific office related trauma prevented Anton from giving this a 6. Was it the use of the printing press?

SCORES:
Craig: 6
Motsi: 6
Shirley: 6
Anton: 5
TOTAL: 23

Shayne Ward & Nancy Xu
Samba / Do I Do – Stevie Wonder

I’m not sure that there has been “a bit” in Strictly history that has become more instantaneously annoying than Wynne and Shayne’s midlife crisis samba induced rivalry – and Wynne haunting the studio like The Phantom of Elstree

it would maybe not be quite as bad if it wasn’t such wednesday night dad-wants-to-buy-your-love cheeky Nando’s quality banter. And in this build your own meal of divorced dad energy, Wynne is the garlic bread and plain chips (DON’T YOU DARE ORDER HIM THE PERI-SALTED ONES) and Shayne is obviously the Lemon and Herb quarter chicken because most of this samba felt like I was watching sexy chicken husbandry

this is just the mid-movie dance break between the love interests in Chicken Run 3: Passion of the Roast voiced by guest stars Jennifer Lopez as Jenny from the Cluck and… I don’t know, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about sexy-mildly-offensive-Latina-JLo-chicken and was compelled to write that sentence by a force that wouldn’t let me go

the biggest problem for the judges was not in fact the sexy farmyard disco vibe but more the fact that… this was just a salsa. Like many a dance to come, Nancy was given her genre for the week, shrugged and decided to just make do with what Shayne could already do. Which seemed to mostly be gyrating his hips with such an aggression that I’m sure the newly employed Training Room Chaperone had to spend a good 15 minutes wondering if they had to report it to HR

I’m sorry, but this man will never be a sex symbol ever again. If his Chappell Roan as Margot Robbie as Barbie drag look from Rock of Ages hasn’t killed it for you

then I think ol’ buzzsaw hips will have, it certainly has for Craig

they were very kind and didn’t have Shayne in frame when Wynne scored 5 points more than him for somehow having less samba content than a samba that wasn’t even a samba. Don’t worry Shayne, you’ll always obviously be TessBot’s favourite as she grooved next to him like she was reenacting Gwyneth Paltrow’s ill-fated ski trip

every time I think the TessBot jokes are getting too mean, she does something else that only convinces me more that she’s the Tinman in a blonde wig.

SCORES:
Craig: 4
Motsi: 6
Shirley: 5
Anton: 6
TOTAL: 21

Toyah Wilcox & Ugh… Neil Jones
Tango / Ray of Light – Madonna

And thus we begin our run of returning professional dancers but while everyone was excited for the three labrador retrievers in a trenchcoat we call Aljaz, the triumphant return of Amy Freakin’ Dowden and Nadiya Bychkova Trying Jokes (Shut up, she’s *my* favourite.) I don’t think there was a single soul on this earth clamouring for more Neil Jones? Would the Neil Jones fans in the audience please make themselves known? I just want to talk. I find it even more confusing because it means that Carlos and the emotional support armchair of a man that is Kai are both benched despite both being quite popular?

Neil has been benched since Series 19 having managed to waste the potential of Nina Wadia camping her way to at least Week 5 like she was trying to astrally project herself into the role of Widow Twankey in the Buxton pantomime

It’s was a very deserved 2 years on the glittery naughty step – I still don’t quite understand how he managed to get eliminated first on a series where Gorka was trying his damndest to cut that paycheck and leave ASAP.

Now, you would think that MAYBE Neil would have spent the last 2 years thinking about what he’d done and how he might… not do that again if he was given the chance to go around again, even if the likelihood of that seemed like the same odds as being killed by your own pet cassowary. WELL. Sever his brachial artery and call him Marvin Hajos because his cassowary just came back to roost and it’s doing a terrible tango (again)

I don’t even know where to start with this tango because it is SO BAD, right from the outset Toyah is being whipped around like Neil trying to turn a wet inside-out sock the right way out

and between that and Toyah’s approach to the staccato tango head snaps being to perform them like a Pekingese trapped on a supercharged Roomba

by the end of the routine she was so lost that you could’ve told her it was wednesday night and she was down at the Mecca Bingo and she’d have had no choice but to believe you

The judges rightfully hated the whole thing, Shirley tried her best to salvage Neil’s reputation from sinking into the quicksand of absolutely horrendous Tangos

LET HIM GO GIRLYPOP, HE’S NOT WORTH IT!

Meanwhile, Motsi was only able to critique it through the medium of an angry iguana impression which does a surprisingly good job of translating this dance into terms I can actually understand

they very quickly ended up with the lowest score by quite a margin – they’re tied with quite a few couples with the biggest difference between Lowest Score and Second Lowest Score in week 1. Admittedly they both took the pair of twos they received from Shirley and Craig better than Shayne or Pete took having their sexy lobs of routines being scored 3s

Gorka and Lauren went on quite the journey in terms of how they thought this routine should’ve been scored – “BOO! A TWO!” to “Actually, a 2 is probably generous.” We love character development. TRY IT SOME TIME, NEIL.

SCORES:
Craig: 2
Motsi: 4
Shirley: 2
Anton: 4
TOTAL: 12

Tasha Ghouri & Aljaz Skorjanec
Cha-cha-cha / Espresso – Sabrina Carpenter

The closest I have ever come to creating a Patreon is the temptation to do a dramatic reading of Tasha’s Wikipedia page – specifically the Love Island portion because it is the most insane collection of words I’ve ever seen and EVERYTHING has a source

(he had actually sucked it.) with a citation to an archived Grazia article is maybe the funniest thing anyone has ever put on Wikipedia. It’s at least a strong competitor with Rhys Stephenson linking his own Ancestry.com page. And whoever used my recaps as sources for information about All That Glitters (RIP you wildly unsustainable show). LOOK MA, I’M A REPUTABLE SOURCE!

Obviously Strictly would prefer you didn’t read Tasha’s wikipedia page for a multitude of incredibly funny reasons – there’s a lengthy explanation of her previous dance experience and… well, she dated Giovanni for a brief period BUT DON’T THINK ABOUT THAT! LOOK, IT’S ALJAZ! HE’S SHINY AND NEW AGAIN! EVERYTHING. IS. FINE. THERE IS NO WAR IN BA SING SE!

and he was getting quite the reintroduction having been handed Abbey Clancy 2: Latin Disco Boogaloo on a silver platter a medium-sized espresso cup

and before the pedants come at me about that not being a medium-sized anything, I’ll have you know that’s a to-scale recreation of a Starbucks grande. And was obviously there because they were being incredibly subtle about how they’d forked out for Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso this early in the competition. She was also getting the slightly outdated Barbie routine as there was more than a little similarity to various Barbie looks with her hair and styling

and in a nice case of plaything verisimilitude, by the end of this cha cha that involved A LOT of spinning, she did look a little bit like a Barbie that someone had played a little too hard with

So there’s no doubt that the show is highly invested in Tasha as a strong potential finalist. The biggest obstacle she faces is Tess reading memes at us like someone’s wine aunt reading deep-fried crispy ICanHazCheeseburger memes that have been copied and pasted so much they look more deteriorated than the Shroud of Turin

dress Gorka up as maid outfit Raymond the Cat and make Tess read the Animal Crossing copypasta, YOU COWARDS

I want you to all compliment my restraint in not posting the Vaporeon copypasta. The internet is our greatest mistake.

Unsurprisingly, Tasha was really good! There’s still room for improvement but I clapped like a giddy circus seal who just wants you to throw the ball during their side by side work

the biggest critique was that she lifted her feet a little too much, a critique that Joanne Clifton tried to demonstrate how to improve upon on It Takes Two using pieces of paper and was promptly hoisted by 6 inches of glittery designer hubris

if you’re going to demonstrate dance techniques, maybe wear dance shoes? Just a thought.

Shirley however has high hopes for Tasha in the rumba. We now go live to Shirley’s previous prediction of Rumba stardom

I’m so sorry Tasha. It’s a death sentence, like me calling anyone on MasterChef my favourite.

SCORES:
Craig: 8
Motsi: 8
Shirley: 7
Anton: 7
TOTAL: 30

JB “Merry Christmas!” Gill & Amy Dowden
Waltz / When I Need You – Leo Sayer

The very second that they announced JB was joining the cast two things occurred:
1. Every reality TV pilled millennial ran to Twitter to post the video of him shouting “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” halfway through an X Factor performance.
2. Everyone knew he was going to be designated as Amy’s Nice Man for her grand return to the show and will likely sweep to victory with him. All we had to do was hope that they didn’t go for the Team Wales approach and lumber her with Wynne. SHE’S BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH. Luckily:

Amy is well overdue a win, or at the very least a finale placement: 6 series of solid work and she’s only made it to the final once. “Karen’s done 12 series prior to this one and only seen the final twice!” I hear you cry. And yes, I know that. But I said “solid work” – Karen’s work is a gaseous compound made up primarily of weird costumes, terrible Couple’s Choices and a desire for premium dog food sponsors on Instagram. They are not the same.

The waltz was also a good choice for her returning dance – it’s sweet and appropriately schmaltzy and suitably microwaved my cold dead heart to a more ambient temperature

and got the standing ovation from everyone that was 100% for Amy and not *really* for JB at all and allowed the judges to give a critique that was 90% about how nice it is to have Amy back. Except or Craig who wanted to give legitimate critique but Motsi bulldozed into that plan

GOOD VIBES ONLY. THERE IS NO WAR IN BA SING SE.

The only way in which this waltz didn’t work was Amy trying to excitedly shout “OUR FIRST DANCE WILL BE…. THE WALTZ!” at a crowd of people who were just there to request Beat Again three times during the encore until Marvin has to call it quits because Rochelle has a strict bedtime of 10:30pm

also slightly obsessed with the fact that every other band that has had multiple members having done the show makes a thing of it (McFly & The Wanted specifically). NOT A SQUEAK was uttered about Aston Merrygold’s time on Strictly despite him being RIGHT THERE

I want to know everything that he thinks about that absolutely wretched barbershop Viennese Waltz that Janette farted out. The wig. The Jackson 5. The fact it was all a waking nightmare. TELL YOUR STORY ASTON.

SCORES:
Craig: 7
Motsi: 8
Shirley: 8
Anton: 8
TOTAL: 31

Pete Wicks & Jowita Przystal
Paso Doble / Breathe – Prodigy

I don’t think anyone’s casting this year caused me more pause for concern than Pete Wicks’s. Not for any particular reason, on paper he’s squeaky clean and completely controversy free. But he just looks like the phrase “bad vibes” – he suffers from the chronic condition of tragically not being able to look like anything other than a bit of a Reality TV Love Rat

which the show is desperately trying to pass off as being The Sexy One (Montell is RIGHT THERE guys, we have eyes) but he only fills me with the same feeling of forlorn sadness that an unwell axolotl in a fishtank that desperately needs a clean does

someone give him some tetracycline and a water change, STAT!

However his… aura of grease was going to come in handy this week as for the inaugural Bad Boy Paso of the series they were sending Pete to the sexiest place on earth… The Gay Steel Mill from The Simpsons

you know how Strictly has a tendency to theme their dances around occupational work experience? Pete is bucking that trend by apparently being catapulted through every genre of niche porn as he’s going from leather clad steelworker to Cowboy Pete Bop next week. We’re assured he’s playing the roll of the cowboy, even though I think he’d suit being the horse more given how he stomped his way through this paso like a lubed up dressage pony

I hated this routine, all 10 seconds of it repeating ad-nauseum. It by all means should’ve been a lob of a routine, the week one sexy paso? Nothing screams Average Strictly harder than a man with a chiselled jaw wearing eyeliner. Jowita really phoned this in, there was not a single piece of interesting choreography. Which I’ll generously assume was because she didn’t know what to do with a Prodigy song, especially one that Dave Arch is going to perform like he’s putting it through a woodchipper. It would be my worst Strictly nightmare to have to perform to any Dave Arch produced ElectroRock number. But allow me to list all my incredibly ill-advised pop punk paso ideas [ARIADNE, NOBODY CARES.]

The judges also all hated this, Shirley specifically calling out the fact that there was not nearly enough actual Paso Doble in this overly committed Jack Sparrow cosplayer at Comic Con of a dance

Craig agreed but enjoyed the *checks notes* storytelling of Sexy Steelworker and his… I don’t know, what was Jowita in this narrative? Sexy Smoke? An Erotic Steel Alloy? A Seductive Coke Oven? A GREAT BIG PILE OF SLAG?

even Anton hated it at which point it became very apparent that this paso had been a gross miscalculation of sexual hubris and TessBot just began to hoot about how amazing his entrance onto the dancefloor had been

Which was not helping the pervasive opinion that there was not a lot of Paso content as, unsurprisingly, being lowered onto the dancefloor looking like Monica Geller with her braids stuck on the shower rail is not a legitimate Paso Doble move

he still managed to get 5s out of Anton and Motsi – the latter of which had made a valiant attempt at defending the routine on the grounds she thought it was captivating. Craig and Shirley will however do everything in their power to avoid seeing it ever again

I’m all in on Shirley joining me in this, I’m going to say explicable, grudge.

SCORES:
Craig: 4
Motsi: 5
Shirley: 3
Anton: 5
TOTAL: 17

Sarah Hadland & Vito Coppola
Quickstep / 9 to 5 – Dolly Parton

Vito may have just won MasterChef with perfect pasta making and being the one contestant interesting enough to not cook some form of roast dinner (which does make the fact Wynne had to stand around dressed as a chef all night a little bit funny) but Sarah was taking no chances on his tea making abilities having entered the training room armed with a kettle and a mini fridge (careful, they’ll start charging you £1500 pcm)

and subjecting Vito to an extensive teabagging exam about the colour theory of tea

this is somehow more erotic than Pete Wicks smizing his way through a Key Stage 3 educational video about Metal and Non-metal Oxides.

I would have happily bet £20 that Sarah’s first dance would’ve been to Proud by Heather Small – which was the one funny running gag in Miranda. However, what with the Joke Shop setting it may have been leaning a little too hard into the Miranda box trap they’re still trying to use to lure Miranda Hart onto the cast with

but this is now our fifth 9 to 5 Quickstep and I’m loathe to look a gifted Dolly Parton in the mouth but… other songs with a 4/4 timing do exist. I suppose, I should just be glad that Sarah at least managed to escape the deep-fried bichon frise they’d stapled to Sara Davies’s head during the last outing of this same theme wearing a pair of groucho glasses

I did very much enjoy the addition of the groucho glasses both on the large rubber duck and vito

they also made for a novel change to the usual projectile fedoras we spent all of last series flinging at the unsuspecting front row of the audience. I hope they at least give everyone a splash zone warning and that if you manage to catch the torpedoing piece of headwear you get to keep it.

Sarah’s quicksep was the standard mid-show safety dance – an obvious crowd-pleaser from a more than capable dancer that the judges can critique by just firing a few buzzwords at without any elaboration

because they’ve fallen ever so slightly behind time what with Nick Knowles forgetting how interviews work, the Amy freakin’ Dowden Power Hour and the systematic dismantling of Pete Wicks’s allure

so I wasn’t at all surprised that she has ended up with the highest scoring Week 1 Quickstep in Strictly history. I haven’t fact checked that, I don’t fully trust the Strictly staticians because much like the Library of Alexandria – most of its ancient texts were lost to the destructive forces of THE BBC HIDING IT ALL IN THEIR ARCHIVES – RELEASE THE ARLENE PHILLIPS ERA, I KNOW YOU HAVE IT DOWN THERE.

SCORES:
Craig: 8
Motsi: 8
Shirley: 7
Anton: 7
TOTAL: 30

Tom Dean & Nadiya Bychkova
Tango / Golden – Harry Styles

I was fully prepared to go for the portmanteau team name of Team Nam for this pairing because I would’ve bet a fair amount of money on Tom Dean being another name on Nadiya’s roster of men who dance like storks trying to take a pair of trousers off that they eventually stopped lowering from the ceiling like the world’s cruelest claw machine

I don’t know why they punished her so hard after Davood Ghadami but I hope and pray that the Phantom of the Opera Argentine Tango that took the two of them out in Musicals Week is the same partially obscured operatic hubris that slays Wynne Evans at Halloween. Andrew Lloyd Webber is to him as Victoria Wood was to Jayde Adams.

Instead, Nadiya has opted for the two of them to go by the name Team Golden – and it’s not because they partially pay her in luxury hair extensions colour P6 27: Golden Truffle. It’s because between the pair of them they have 3 Olympic Gold Medals

which is a VERY funny joke that nobody laughed at harder than Nadiya herself

Lauren doing the mental maths <3 I’m still so proud of Nadiya every time she manages to be genuinely funny, she’s come so far since dragging David James through 4 weeks of this show powered purely by the friction of your dad rubbing his thighs. If Dan Walker did one good thing in this world it was buy her the £50 joke book expansion pack. It certainly wasn’t the move to Channel 5.

What also helped Tom was the fact he was doing the second Tango of the evening; the bar for which was currently swiffering along the floor like a Persian cat on speed

it was *notably* better, still not perfect because he has a tendency to stiffen up in hold and loom over you like the man at a bus stop who’s about to explain the latest timetable to you against your will

which Shirley and Motsi jumped at the opportunity to give a very sapphic correctional demonstration of – we’ll take all the queer crumbs we can get because the BBC is giving us NOTHING this year

my favourite part of which was neither of them knowing when to sit back down so Shirley gave the rest of her critique standing up while Motsi gripped her like an anxious teenager taking prom photos whose putting all of their faith in the liberal amount of Lynx Africa and their dad’s 40 year old bottle of Drakkar Noir to disguise how much they’re sweating

but nooooo, the press is going to try to convince us that Pete and Jowita are the showmance of the series. I’d maybe but that more if I wasn’t so convinced that Jowita probably has to put those hawk-shaped stickers on their training room mirrors to help Pete remember that’s just his reflection and he can’t fall in love with it. Nadiya doesn’t have to worry about any showmance rumours though because Tom’s still looking at her like she’s a bomb he has to diffuse

the only time I’ve seen someone look at Nadiya with that much fear was when Dan Walker was told he was going to have to dance a very Christian rumba.

SCORES:
Craig: 5
Motsi: 6
Shirley: 6
Anton: 6
TOTAL: 23

Dr. Punam Krishan & Gorka Marquez
Cha-cha-cha / Love At First Sight – Kylie Minogue

If you’re wanting to make bets on who the finalists will be, Punam is a pretty safe bet considering much like the Gloucester Tall Ships Festival – it’s the biennial year in which Gorka actually puts any amount of effort in

he’s a beautifully predictable piece of shirtless clockwork and my God is he going to make you fully aware of his chest workout

I have faith he’ll somehow manage to find a way to do a tits out waltz but I eagerly await the very slutty paso doble.

Gorka may be more formulaic than an episode of Octonauts, but the ferrets in the ballpit of ideas decided to throw us one curveball with this routine: it wasn’t set in a doctor’s office! They usually jump at the chance to get that plastic skeleton out of the broom cupboard (surprisingly not a TessBot joke)

instead, Punam and Gorka were being, as their score of 19 would let you know, pedestrians

I really want to know Strictly’s fascination with theming routines around dancing in traffic, or in the case of Punam just… sitting there (been there, girl)

Gorka’s dedication to this through the legs move that NEVER works needs to be studied, distilled, bottled and sold as a new agey vitamin supplement. It also wouldn’t be the first supplement controversy amongst this particular cast. READ PAUL MERSON’S WIKIPEDIA PAGE PUNAM, I DARE YOU.

Luckily Punam and Gorka weren’t having to contend with any poorly rendered CGI cars – has the Strictly graphics department FINALLY listened to our complaint about their gummy looking animals? Seems unlikely, we’ll have to wait to see what equine horror awaits us in next week’s Rootin’, Tootin’ American Smoothin’. Although Punam could’ve maybe used a few badly animated Fiat 500s gliding around aimlessly to distract from the fact she didn’t actually know what to do with her free arm at any point during this routine

it was the only awkward part of the routine, aside from the bum scoot across the zebra crossing (9 out of 10 GPs would not recommend) – the rest was perfectly passable if a little generic. I think the wildest the crowd went was when Gorka hucked Punam’s coat into the crowd

genuinely quite impressive if you’ve ever tried to throw anything into the laundry basket at the other side of the bedroom – it alone should’ve scored more than a 4

Gorka’s angling for that Journey Narrative to the final – he has NEVER cheered that much for a 4 in his life. God bless him.

SCORES:
Craig: 4
Motsi: 5
Shirley: 5
Anton: 5
TOTAL: 19

Paul Merson & Karen Hauer
American Smooth (???) / Vindaloo – Fat Les

I will spare you the 2000 word essay about whoever edited Paul’s little Vindaloo skit clearly doesn’t understand the concept of diegetic and nondiegetic musical verisimilitude (WHAT 2-BIT FILM COLLEGE DID YOU GRADUATE FROM?) Mostly because my other favourite bit about it was the fact after he walked down the street headbutting and catching balls

there’s a shot of him walking up behind a maltese poodle and it feels like the implication is that… he’s about to kick it

He doesn’t, I REPEAT, Paul Merson is not a dog kicker! They just chose to make it feel like he is. And speaking of kicking innocent things that don’t deserve it, this American Smooth…

truthfully we can’t call this an American Smooth as ALL of the judges made very clear with the uncategorizable inanity of it reducing Motsi’s brain to minestrone soup and leaking out of her ears

would this stop Anton from scoring the nonsense themed routine that flew in the face of everything the dance stood for a 6? Which, bear in mind, is a higher score than he’ll give to a third of the other couples who at least did a routine that looked like a dance (not you, Toyah) and not your uncle trying to mime “Wellerman” during a game of charades

LIKE FUCK IT WOULD

of course this was catnip to him, it’s a novelty song with a dumb theme, that’s 95% of his Strictly ouvre. Karen however was making it palpably obvious that she hated every minute of having to summon this wretch of a routine from the depths of Strictly’s Glittery Hellhole. Granted, she did the best job she possibly could with a song designed to be shouted drunkenly while eating a pie that has a 15% chance of causing food poisoning, but this is the dead-eyed stare of a woman who had to spend several hours negotiating like an Ace Attorney character to not have the ridiculous trousers be a tear-away reveal

OBJECTION!

This routine would have annoyed me a lot more if it was done during a week where someone was going to be eliminated – don’t worry, it still annoys me that ALL the judges spent their critiques asking where the heck the American Smooth was and what Karen’s sea shantying Beyblade of a routine had done with it

only to then score him a procession of not overly terrible scores

I’ll allow it on the grounds of Pete Wicks dying inside but I still feel like I’m owed one of the Strictly FC scarves as compensation for having had to endure a Vindaloo American Smooth

it’s the least they could do for me.

SCORES:
Craig: 2
Motsi: 4
Shirley: 5
Anton: 6
TOTAL: 17

Jamie Borthwick & Michelle Tsiakkas
Viennese Waltz / Beautiful Things – Benson Boone

NEW DANCER KLAXON! (Not you, Jamie)

One of my favourite things about seeing a new professional get a partner is finding out what their training room aesthetic is – bright neons? An undisclosed GymShark partnership? Fran Drescher In The Nanny But Make It Athleisure (Katya, obvi)? Michelle has chosen… I don’t actually know but it looks like a bikini for a cat

I didn’t know how much personality Michelle would be able to bring, she always came across very mellow and a bit shy on her It Takes Two segments over the last two years – admittedly she was usually sat next to Lauren who radiates charisma like Jamie Borthwick radiates “Pigeon who was turned into a man”

which, if you’ve seen even one of tweets about University Challenge you know is very specifically My Type. RELEASE THE UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE DATING SIMULATOR, I WANT TO ROMANCE LOVEDAY THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF ORNITHOLOGICAL BONUS QUESTIONS THAT I ONLY KNOW THE ANSWERS TO BECAUSE I WATCHED BIRD DOCUMENTARIES EVERY DAY AS A CHILD WHEN MY BRAIN WAS JUST ABSORBENT SLIME

Hapax Legomenon!

Somehow Jamie, the most inoffensive white bread man to exist (unless you drive in the Romford area – this cast apparently collect points against their license like it’s Pokemon Go during Lockdown) because he’s fresh off winning the 2023 Christmas Special

is it slightly weird that they cast him so soon? Yes. JB Gill won it in 2012 and it’s barely had a mention. Is it likely because someone pulled out because of the controversies surrounding the show? I’m going to assume Yes. Is it actually a problem? No – he had like 2 weeks of dance training for an incredibly fine quickstep that scored a perfect 40 through the sheer force of Christmas spirit and Christmas spirits alone

but you’re not in sherry-fuelled Kansas anymore, Toto. They went IN on him, giving him a more complex critique than Week 1 really called for, I imagine mostly motivated by a desire to show that his 2 weeks of extra dance training for the lowest stakes you could possibly imagine isn’t as big an advantage as people were trying to make out with Anton giving a posture demo that went on for far too long and Shirley clearly hated being a part of

STAY AWAY FROM MOTSI’S WOMAN!

and you could tell that Jamie was at least a little bit shellshocked from the whiplash of going from mandatory gift wrapped 10s to OH GOD, IS THIS ACTUALLY A COMPETITION?

it was a perfectly fine dance – I think I was cool to it mostly because of the fact that every song on Costa’s current playlist is just Beautiful Things by Benson Boone with the serial numbers sawn off. But there was a nice amount of drama and variation in tempo, even if Jamie didn’t quite pull off the more intense portions of the dance

it was a very strong week for general playground quality spinning.

SCORES:
Craig: 6
Motsi: 6
Shirley: 5
Anton: 6
TOTAL: 23

Chris McCausland & Dianne Buswell
Cha-cha-cha / Twist and Shout – The Beatles

Chris McCausland being the show’s first blind contestant has been one of the biggest talking points [tone indicator: positive] of this year’s series. My only hesitation for his casting was his partnership with Dianne

I’ve never really managed to warm to her – mostly because her partnerships fall into 1 of three camps: Really Annoying, Dead Within 4 Weeks or He Likes Torches And That’s The Only Personality Quirk We’ve Managed To Bleed From This Stone Good Luck Riding This One Out For A Whole Series Babe

Tyler, I’m sure you were lovely but… who even were you?

Chris however has brought out a very different side in Dianne – it’s mostly a Dianne who actually looks like she’s enjoying her time sitting next to her dance partner on It Takes Two

but it’s also a Dianne Who Is A Good Teacher. I’m sure it helps that she is finally partnered with someone who isn’t just about a full 2 feet taller than her

I really enjoyed watching this dance which is not something I have been able to say about many of Dianne’s post-Sugg ventures onto the dancefloor. It was by no means perfect but it had a good deal more stand out moments than just about all the other limp attempts at Latin this evening

it’s also much easier to watch the second time because you’re not constantly bracing for the signature Dianne Buswell Barrel Roll across the dancefloor like she’s treating the Elstree Studios as a simulation of the Vietnam War. Instead we got an addition to the One Woman Buswell Band

Dianne clearly found a method of teaching that works for her and Chris – I wish people wouldn’t refer to it as “working a miracle” because that’s both INCREDIBLY patronising to Chris who has put a lot of effort in but also makes offering basic means of accessibility sound nigh on impossible. Which it isn’t.

SCORES:
Craig: 4
Motsi: 6
Shirley: 6
Anton: 7
TOTAL: 23

Montell Douglas & Johannes Radebe
Foxtrot / Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby? – Dinah Washington

The BBC has certainly wasted no time in getting their money’s worth out of the Gladiators cast having put Nitro through the Celebrity MasterChef ringer where he mostly cooked novelty breakfasts and tried not to mention the health benefits of capsaicin

and Montell now doing Strictly. I’ll never quite get over the fact her casting reveal was done via Roblox, sending the vast majority of the Strictly audience into a spiral of existential dread

also, if you’re going to use a format in which everyone looks like they’re made out of 5 loaves of bread bestowed with the curse of sentience, why would you not cast Giant?

not that I’m not THRILLED by Montell’s casting but the thought of Vicki Gill having to design a tuxedo powerful enough to contain that brick shithouse of a man is very funny to me. Also make Viper do the Celebrity Pottery Throwdown they’ve started doing at Christmas

he is my favourite angry idiot and I CAN FIX HIM.

But while many of the Gladiators have joined various Pantomimes, Johannes was aiming for the West End moon because even if they missed they’d land amongst the community theatre stars

I normally roll my eyes a little at these overly theatrical performances because they’re usually being performed with a level of looking straight at the camera while screaming “HIRE ME GUYS AND DOLLS, I DANCE GOOD!” until their eyes bleed. But I don’t get the impression that Montell is trying to launch a West End debut, I think she’s just really charismatic and has the fortunate outcome of being partnered with Johannes

I’m sure the fact she’s also spent her entire TV career thus far in lycra really helped leave any inhibitions she may have had at the door. She’s definitely already top of my list of People Likely To Make The Final But Ultimately Lose To JB and Amy, even if they just keep her because they need that sweet, sweet Very Proud Parent B-roll footage

My dream final at this point is probably JB & Amy, Montell & Johannes, Sarah & Vito and Tasha & Aljaz or Sam & Nikita. Shayne and Nancy might upset things but I truly believe Nancy’s trapped in a Will Mellor 2: Mancunian Boogaloo situation with Shayne. They’re a mental health awareness week Rumba and an overly specific cultural reference of a street commercial Couple’s Choice away from disaster at every moment.

SCORES:
Craig: 6
Motsi: 7
Shirley: 6
Anton: 7
TOTAL: 23

Wynne Evans & Katya Jones
Samba / Help Yourself – Tom Jones

Good lord this is going to be an exhausting run of 6 weeks, that uncanny partially obscured Phantom of the Opera Halloween Routine can not come fast enough. I’m just so tired of how inorganic any part of the Wynne narrative is AND IT’S ONLY BEEN 1 WEEK! From the lab-grown beef between him and Shayne that nobody cares about because both Sambas were NOT GOOD to the fact he interjects some sort of banterous comment into a SIGNIFICANT amount of other people’s interviews – it’s giving Neil. And nobody wants to “give Neil”. Not even Neil. I’d bet a solid £30 he’s unironically called himself The Bantersaurus Rex and everyone immediately made a separate group chat without him because of it.

They are however saving Wynne’s first operatic performance for next week’s Blue Danube Viennese Waltz. Instead this week was reserved for the other 3 of the 4 things the ferrets in the ball pit know about him: He’s Welsh, he won Celebrity MasterChef and he has a history of annoying moustaches

The least they could’ve done was take his toque off and reveal a little rat was driving him the whole time

WHERE IS CAMERON LOMBARD? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY FORWARD ROLLING BOY?

It also took them a full 35 seconds to get to anything that even vaguely resembled a dance move and reveal into his glittery chef’s uniform that honestly just made him look like he had feline nipples – WHY ARE THEY PINK, VICKI? WHY ARE THEY PINK?

if he needs a bathing suit, Michelle knows someone

and for the remaining 1 minute of actual dancing, it was a thorough handbagging as Katya mostly danced around him for which Anton clapped most enthusiastically because “the samba is a stupid dance”

Anton is the opposite of “Come to Brazil!”

Not even Craig offered much of a critique, I imagine mostly because it was the closing number and we need to end on a high but that’s a charitable reading amongst the fact there’s more pushing for Wynne than there is on the average maternity ward

joint 3rd on the leaderboard for an accumulated 40 seconds of dancing? Somewhere, a ghostly voice wails “FAFFIN’ ABAHT!” from the great beyond and a jar of pickled walnuts explodes. [Ariadne, don’t even pretend Len Goodman wouldn’t have loved Wynne and let him off the hook for everything.]

SCORES:
Craig: 6
Motsi: 6
Shirley: 7
Anton: 7
TOTAL: 23

And that’s it for Week 1!

Again, I’m sorry if these come a little late, I’ve had to start being kind to myself about the publishing schedule. But I hope it makes them that much better giving myself he extra time to write them.!