Strictly Results: 12 become 11

[shallowness]

We opened with a pro group dance celebration of the BBC natural history unit, which got better as it went on. The first element/section was a bit…well, I was clearly not engaged because I was wondering why they hadn’t got authentic African dancers if they were going in this direction. I also didn’t love the pipes, and then it got very interpretive dance and there was actual dust to emphasise this was earth. Things improved win the fire section, with Dianne, of course, the star, and the ladies’ cozzies doing a lot of work. Things improved again with air, as represented by Nadiya, and her coming into contact with another dancer (Kai?) was somehow rather touching, even though I knew there was a harness and a wind machine, and then all the dancers came on the floor. (No water???) The David Attenborough voiceover worked better than, say, the Alan Sugar clip on the live show.

The recap interestingly put Molly in the ‘dreaded middle’ and I properly took in that Jayde was one point above Kym.

First lot: when Tess called James safe (shocker, I’d thought he was in more danger than worse dancer Tony) it seemed as through Kym was in trouble. But maybe it was the producers telling her and us that you needed to put in a performance like Fleur’s Argentine Tango to deserve being called safe first the week after a dance-off. Anyway, Kym and Graziano’s reaction was even bigger. Helen and Will being called safe was fair enough, but when Tony was (I’d hoped they’d torture him even if I always thought the public would vote for him), the bottom three had been saved.

Molly’s popularity was tested and found wanting. In hindsight, it wasn’t a lights-out impressive dance and maybe telling us you went to a stage school wasn’t going to garner huge votes, even if she didn’t have much life experience to pick from being the baby of the show. Fierce encouragement from Motsi.

An actual lady got to sing on Strictly 2022. I didn’t think Becky Hill sang that well and I thought her dress was heinous, but Giovanni and Luba were dancing for most of the song, so that was fine, and they were fab.

Judges bit could have been renamed Demo Time with Anton. Claudia dealt with that neatly, and also with Craig going a bit far with his comment about ‘illegal’ lifts.

Second lot were even tenser waiting, as it was clear someone who didn’t deserve it would be in the dance-off. I thought the producers might torture Fleur to build a sense of jeopardy around Molly, but it was Tyler who had to wait until the last to hear that Jayde was in the dance-off.

Again, her position on the leaderboard played its part in that, and her not being able to take advantage of the gimme that was the Charleston. I can see why people voted for James (he loves his kids) and Kym (as I did myself) over a Charleston that really suffered in contrast with Helen’s. Interesting that on ITT Monday, superfan Jayde admitted she had a feeling she was in trouble between the live and results show.

Not much Shirley could advise her, because unless if Molly fell off a table or messed up with the props, there was only going to be one result (although I think that Helen is now clearly the best placed female celeb). I thought both routines were better danced this time around, but Jayde was told she would leave. She was very eloquent, particularly in paying tribute to Strictly for looking after everyone on it.

[Edited for typos 10/2/25.]