And everyone better remember who the true star of the show is.

Ding Dong! The Bosh Is Dead!

The first elimination of the series, so the atmosphere is tense! Or… at least it would be if it wasn’t palpably obvious who was going to go home the moment everyone came out wearing legitimate dance costumes and then Thomas Skinner appeared looking like Matt Lucas playing The Only Gay Baked Potato on Uranus

everyone else? Dressed with dignity and respect, or at least as much dignity and respect as a tie-dyed bedspread Linda Barker made on Changing Rooms for a tiki room themed bedroom can afford oneself

truly a tale of two Sambas (I wrote this entire thing forgetting Thomas danced a Salsa, because let’s be honest it wasn’t so much a dance as it was Kirk van Houten doing Wii Fit exercises)

Alex Kingston gets trapped in a segment of The One Show as she goes to meet a community Samba Band

Amy has to go do the closest thing we’ve had to a humiliating comedy VT since 2018 in the Elstree parking lot

Alex flies in her Goddaughter from America to be front row to witness her authentic Samba while she screeches “AND SHE’S LATINA!” in that spanish accent you have to put on when you order the quesadillas from your distinctly not Spanish waiter at Las Iguanas

and it’s crickets in the frontrow for Thomas. I WONDER WHY.

It doesn’t take an oracle to work out which one the judges would gush over, with Alex going on to get the highest score of the evening after Shirley needed a hard reboot

don’t worry, Shirls. It’s only national television

she wasn’t just tallying up the seconds to make sure that Alex had done a fully legal amount of Sambaing – she’d been too burnt by La Voix’s faffing and Katya doing High Concept Ringer Nonsense™ earlier in the evening. Apparently she’s going to judge the International Championships at the Royal Albert Hall, dontcha know

and thinks Alex could give all of them a few lessons in lowering their hips – Jimmy’s lessons in hipping are a little more of a liability and come with a splash zone warning

I don’t know if that was Jimmy’s hips, Craig. WE’LL GET TO THE TROUSERS SITUATION.

So while Johannes got to queen out over how well it was going

Amy could only brace for the impact of Craig’s inevitable 2 paddle

and even that seemed generous considering Skinner danced within the same 10 feet of the dancefloor and didn’t do anything more athletic than displaying Amy like she was a moderately sized trout. I don’t want to give the show too much credit, but I have to assume this was all a deliberately calculated bussing – the heinous outfit, giving Ross & Chris sappy ballroom numbers, the 90 seconds of your dad limping through one of the CherFitness: A New Attitude exercise routines, Amy seriously over-promising

(we have very much seen all of these lifts on the show before) and most importantly: the softball critiques that mostly amounted to just describing what they could see like a coping mechanism for anxiety

or saying “Well, you tried” with a knowing look

the show *hate* hated him.
I also know I said I wasn’t going to talk about him in the recaps but I feel less bad about it now that I know he’s gone and we’ll not have to spend weeks experiencing his Safety Sex Face. Speaking of which, how about a palate cleanser? Here’s the Monkseal Memorial Safety Sex Face Gallery

at the end of the series, we’ll do a big old run off vote to see who has the best one – I’ve got some fun things planned, much in the same vein as Monkseal’s Monkies because I have never had an original thought in my life.

It was Chris and Nadiya who landed in the Bottom 2 alongside Tom and Amy, despite Ross being at the bottom of the leaderboard. Imaginably being spared by the regional Scottish vote, because it certainly wasn’t for the constant threat of peen

My guy, the show was already at risk because of Jimmy’s well-stocked front bakery, just put the Y-fronts on

JIMMY! THINK UNSEXY THOUGHTS!

Ross’s waltz was serving no real purpose other than to be his one sensible routine as it’s sandwiched between his Hip-Hop Cha-Cha-Cha and next week’s Thunderbirds Paso Doble. So he got to go have a little cry on Loch Lomond while Jowita sat there looking high glam and cunty, basically recreating the entire finale of Killing Eve

and much like the entire finale of Killing Eve the waltz was kind of just fine. It didn’t amount to more than the same box step around the room, but he and Jowita did venture further than an allotted 10ft of floor space and they did a good a job with staging the whole thing with the same aesthetic as a get well soon card you buy for your nan

no expense was spared in buying that Dean Village stock image! Tess had to take up a second job!

this woman and her poor stylist are not safe. She at least doesn’t know about my living playing Tess Dress Mess Guess (my dad is alarmingly well tuned in with the TessBot sartorial zeitgeist) but La Voix is hunting her down like The Terminator in a sensible heel! But if it works as an intervention to her love of an asymmetrical jumpsuit with a lopsided crotch, so be it.

Speaking of La Voix and Aljaz, this… I was going to say “Jive” but I feel we have to just call it a ~Performance~ because really, it was just 15 gimmicks in a trenchcoat. It was meant to be a Jive but they were dancing to Shakira’s “Objection (Tango)”, weird deepcut but ok! And they were *really* leaning into the blend of genre with the whole thing being shades of the (in my mind at leat) infamous Fusion Week that somehow featured two Cha-Cha-Tangos, both of which are kind of gay-mazing

granted, I did find the Tango Fake Out *very* funny as Aljaz the Accordionist awkwardly scooches across the stage while La Voix mouths “It’s a Jive!” at him

I just love how easily Aljaz has leant into the La Voix character of it all and how much fun he’s having with it

given that his last two Jives on the show were the Clara Amfo Elimination Horror (still traumatised by these outfits)

and Emma, Marchioness of Bath and Queen of Tupperware Salmon, I think it’s a fair comment. However, Shirley did point out that there was A LOT of faff-based jive avoidance. Which I’m going to guess was the result of Aljaz realising that La Voix kicks like she’s trapped in a high gravity level of a video game

and I don’t think Shirley is going to get an increase of content at all with next week’s Mary Poppins routine

that look to camera has the exact same energy as that elderly couple who were charged for £200 of pay-per-view porn that they had no idea about but one of them *clearly* knew

but I do imagine the Mary Poppins Bird Lady Waltz might come with at least moderately less kink depending on how you feel about Aljaz wearing a fake beak and hobbling around with bumblefoot (hot.)

an awful lot of stepping on men so far this series (complimentary)

Katya is biding her time and saving it all for their Argentine Tango that she started planning the moment she lay eyes on Lewis

and she just couldn’t help herself, she too embraced Dance Fusion Week with a Viennese Waltz That Fucks Like Tango

and the show obviously knew what it was getting the moment Katya requested the Giant Man Cage

and decided to do their VIENNESE WALTZ training in an industrial space with easily cleaned couches lit entirely in neon red

it’s where she parks Lewis for the night

Katya, you’re going to have to be a little bit subtler because Shirley HATED this routine, finding the whole thing a little bit too aggressive. They were going for passionate but I do think Lewis could do with controlling the mania as he throws himself around like a cat that’s tangled in a shopping bag

it always feels like he’s really hurt himself. And it was unfair of him to go all out sexy given this was George’s week to be kitted out on BBC primetime friendly kink gear

four whole D-rings!
I do find the George/Lewis divide very interesting because in the polls and online spaces I’ve peaked in on and run, Lewis is hemorrhaging support because he’s a filthy ringer with a jawline sculpted by God herself and HE KNOWS IT! Whereas George is a lovely, humble boy with the sad eyes of the dog from The Fox and the Hound

and that it is extremely important if you want to do well in a British TV competition. Katya can rev the engine of her muscle car all she wants, but it’s always going to lose to the relatable sex appeal of Alexis and her Fiat 500

that being said, this was a very good week for George and I did genuinely enjoy this Paso Doble, not least of all because the trousers were trousering

there’s a reason Alexis had him pop an on-beat squat right at the beginning

I’m beginning to get it with the George Clarke Enjoyers™ – if you squint hard enough he does begin to look like Gladiator-era Paul Mescal. And he owes it all to his sex face lessons from Stefan

a process that Alexis was taking *completely* seriously

brave to go for Stefan for advice given he was about to walk out and dance with a retirement years show quality guinea-pig atop his head pulling a face that looked like he wanted to chow down on Dianne’s skull like a nutcracker

what was the necessity of this wig? Is it a reference to something? What does it achieve other than making Stefan look like he’s about to pop in a Werther’s Original and reminisce about 1945? Or are they just trying to make the welcome mat that Anton is trying to pass off as hair look less suspicious

Shirley needs something to clean her collection of tiny shoes on

but back to George’s Stupid Sexy Paso Doble. The judges were incredibly complimentary of how in control he was – ARE YOU LISTENING LEWIS? I personally felt that, at times, it leaned a little bit too mechanical, but that’s mostly because it’s Week 2 and you can see everyone thinking about what move comes next. But his timing was impeccable and I can’t really argue too much with the score he got

I might have capped it at 7s, but they needed someone up in the 30s to bridge the gap between Alex and everyone else and nobody really expected Balvinder of all people to come and end the show with quite as good a Charleston as she did

I’m just delighted that Hot and Weird Julian might be sticking around for longer than initially thought after last week’s dud of a Samba. Granted, I do think the fringe was doing a lot of the heavy lifting by somewhat glamouring everyone and Balvinder can’t dress up as a bowl of Teletubby tagliatelle every week, sadly

however, my biggest take away from this routine is that I now crave a Charleston to the What-a-Mess theme tune because I am 90% that Meghan Trainor doing jazz era cosplay directly samples it in the song Balvinder & Weird and Hot Julian were dancing to

it’d hit all the Strictly beats:
a) A novelty song
b) Nostalgia for a very specific subset of people
c) Dave Arch gets to go Maximum Trombone
d) You get to dress someone up as a dog

We don’t know who’s drawn the Furry short straw with this year’s Movie Week and sadly I don’t think the VHS of 5 back-to-back What-a-Mess vignettes counts as a movie but I imagine if Stefan doesn’t get to do his showreel for Priscilla this week because he is A Very Serious and Extremely Employable Actor™

he’s in for a Kangaroo Jack themed tango to Shaggy’s Hey Sexy Lady. It somehow wouldn’t be the most cursed routine Dianne has ever done even if she crawled out of Stefan’s marsupial pouch

mark yourselves unsafe from Max George Homer.

the actual routine, much like the novelty teacup-sized emu nesting on Stefan’s head, was a little bit of a clunker and not even the strip show floorography was going to glamour themselves above a 17

I think it was maybe worth a couple more points, especially with Shirley giving it the same mark as Chris’s horrific Samba last week but I think the issue may be more that that Samba was HEAVILY overmarked even at 14. However, Chris was very generously given a Recovery Week Viennese Waltz to piddle his way through this week as a desperate Nadiya launched a tactical missile strike in the Baby Wars with the first ever deployment of her daughter meeting Chris’s baby, just to ensure a Maximum Bussing for Skinner

she got burnt by a sportsman tanking the public vote last year, you’ll have to take Movie Week from her cold dead hands this year! She’s probably going to end up doing a Chicken Run Jive to Flip Flop Fly

it’s what you get when you wish upon the Glittery Monkey’s Paw and use your One Good Dress token this early, Nadiya

the Viennese Waltz is much more forgiving on Chris, who cannot be trusted to do anything correctly when not in hold. But he was still barely doing anything in this routine – his role was completely superfluous, Nadiya could’ve performed all of this on her own at most and with a second-hand hat rack with slightly uneven legs at least

there’s no hiding his lack of confidence on the dancefloor and that he just can’t lead a dance – he’s so stiff, you can tell that Joanne’s portrait of two rectangles is Chris and Nadiya without any other context clues

And it’s fine to be the passenger princess, I have no doubt in my mind that Karen is leading her dance with Harry, but at least they can fake it! It is rare that someone gets handbagged in ballroom, it’s usually a Latin number that they get parked in the middle of the floor and danced around like someone busking for loose change. (They had to ask the audience not to throw pennies at Thomas.)

It probably didn’t help Chris that it was a night of waltzes and his dance-themed dance kind of paled into the background of Ross’s Highland Reminiscence, The Viennese Waltz That Fucked Too Close To The Sun and Ellie getting a year 8 biology field trip to the butterfly house

by far the best VT outing of the week. Of course depending how you feel about Katya’s Sexy Soft Play Area

I personally just want to experience the joy of Vito having a butterfly unexpectedly land on his hand

and it may have been a good omen because it was a marked improvement for Ellie who shot up from 17 for last week’s Cha Cha to 23 for her Waltz

mostly on account of the fact she spins like a tornado

I’m so excited for her Viennese Waltz that *just* spinning and twirling – they’re gonna have to give her concrete shoes lest she ends up in the rafters. But it wasn’t all upward trajectories with Karen having a rather dramatic fall from the top with her tango

she hadn’t gone into it particularly confidently because she had quite a pronounced curve to her spine on account of the fact she’s got Scheuermann’s disease. And *I* hadn’t gone in particularly confidently when 90% of their training VT was doing a podcast

but at least Jill Scott is there to protect her from the judges and their sudden expertise in spine growth disorders

I’m sure some of the advice was actually useful for Karen and did make sense but at some point it did just begin to sound like 4 people explaining spine curvature to the woman who has been dealing with a spine curvature for most of her life and maybe only one of them needed to say anything.

I actually kind of liked the routine and honestly thought the worst part of it was the floor projection of the evil lion that looked like a metal band’s cringe album cover

and believe me, I have A LOT of tolerance when it comes to cringe album covers, My Faves are in the trenches – album SLAPS and their lyricism is genius but I cannot show this cover in public

BUT WE GET IT! She’s a footballer and played for the Lionesses – she’s lucky she managed to escape being dressed up as uncomfortably seductive Nala for Movie Week

although I’m not entirely sure the Miss Congeniality routine to “She’s a Lady” is much better – Karen Carney is only 2.5 things: a footballer, a woman and a podcast guest. You can really tell they’ve wanted to cast one of the England Women’s Team for YEARS and now they’re just spaffing Lioness routines up the wall because it’s a Solar Eclipse situation where you’re lucky if it happens again for another 15 years. Nobody else is being pigeonholed this hard – this week Jimmy, also a footballer, got to be the owner of a medium-sized winery and a massive co[ARIADNE, NO!]

I know it’s probably going to go to Vicky or Amber, but I think we need to deploy a Karen Has Friends VT where she goes and does virtual axe throwing with a bunch of ~gal pals~ at 9am on a Wednesday with a palpable sense that everyone had to take a day off work to film it.

Instead of proving they have friends, Amber and Vicky were in a Battle of the Hometowns with Amber going around kissing cornershop workers like she’s making a bid for Mayor

and Vicky just hoping she can redeem herself in the eyes of the North East

Girl, you have the shortest Controversies section on Wikipedia of any Geordie Shore cast member – sure, 12 years ago you threw a stiletto with alarming accuracy in a case of mistaken ice throwing identity, but God forbid a woman have good aim!

I really like Vicky and have done ever since she was on Celebrity MasterChef and bear hugged Yotam Ottolenghi because he complimented her cooking of a liver

I know she’s a divisive character but I personally find her to be very genuine and I can see why the judges saw that in her dance. There were times where it had just the right amount of a First Dance at a wedding tweeness

I just really bought the two of them as a couple in this routine. I’m sure at least part of the appeal is the My Fair Lady Syndrome of it all where in person, Vicky is sort of an amalgamation of the all the DNA scrapings you can get from a Wetherspoons carpet but she can still be glammed up into a “Belle of the Ballroom” and has a very good natural rhythm to her

I’m sure there’s also a little bit of a push for her because she’d make the most sense as the Designated One Show Correspondent. Which is why she also gets the privilege of having The Ghost of Len Goodman invoked upon her

Meanwhile, Amber has to insist upon her working class background because she’s come into this competition as A FILTHY WEST END RINGER. A step in this whole process that Katya appears to have forgotten and is DEFINITELY taking notes of her own

I wish her luck in finding a reason for the Zorro themed Paso Doble to warrant a walk through the streets of Hartlepool where Lewis can kiss a baby, help an old lady walk across the street and maybe save a monkey from execution

but while Lewis plans his PR Campaign, the big story on Saturday night was that it was Amber’s birthday and everyone had to be VERY nice to her

granted, the compliments were all very much warranted – except for the one about wardrobe doing a very good job with this outfit

I thought it really hampered Amber by hiding her neck thereby making her posture look much more hunched and awkward than it actually was. I think Shirley just needed a conduit to complimenting Motsi

it’s the Bussell and Ballas: Sapphic Mystery Years all over again!

Personally my favourite outfits of the night were Vicky’s – that olive green with the gold shot through was stunning and then also Karen’s suit that felt like it was birthed from a Sewing Bee Transformation Challenge during Men’s Wear Week

Shirley however was just pleased that they’d managed to find a pair of sleeves that fit Harry so he could respect the sanctity of the ballroom UNLIKE LEWIS and his SLUTTY BLOUSE

I love a pattern clash, I don’t think this necessarily worked for me, he was just sort of dressed as the Clauditorium

the bigger success for Harry was that he managed to restrain himself from reaching a full sprint during the Quickstep, with his footwork being very deft and well measured

however, afterwards he was allowed an off-leash sprint around the dog park like a particularly frisky spaniel

speaking of frisky

I’m almost as happy as Jimmy is that he’s such a good dancer, I am however struggling to shake off that he daned this exactly like the famous dancing baby screensaver

But that’s how they do it in Cuba!
Jimmy feels like the biggest genuine surprise this year – Karen had a moderate amount of support coming in and people were really willing her to be a success whereas Jimmy was floating around as a popular prediction for a first elimination. And I’ll be really interested to see how this week affects the voting for who you think will win given that ballroom appears as though it’s going to be a real Kryptonite for Karen whereas a variety of other celebs have shown they’re stronger all-rounders already

and you can fill out this week’s Who Do You Think Will Win? poll below

and that’s it for this week! No eliminee bests and worsts polls this week, even if I do believe that his spacefaring Christmas Turkey outfit is possibly the worst Strictly can do.