Strictly Week 8 results show

[shallowness]

The recap emphasised that there were several ties, and grouped Wynne and Katya with the bottom two couples, although at 32, they had only one fewer than Sarah and Vito and Chris and Dianne. My takeout was still that it was about popularity, with a dash of being fortunate in terms of which style you’d had this week.

First to be called safe: Jamie and Michelle, which made all the higher scoring couples (so most of them) twitch, and made me worry for MoJo, but they were in the first safe batch. Not: Wynne and Katya.

The group dance was going for emotive, but the little girl wasn’t really a good fit for a young Michelle, if that’s what they were going for – I’m not really sure what they were going for. Although Michelle and Gorka emoted gracefully, as did the other pros (apart from one ugly lift), I just thought how weird it is that we force these pros from all these different countries with different relationships to their militaries and histories to perform Remembrance as done the properly mandated way on the British Broadcasting Company.

Shirley claimed she had to give Pete a 10. I disagreed.

The second batch included joint leads Tasha and JB, so it was obvious that Sarah and Vito would have to suffer the longest wait to be called safe, but unsurprisingly, Shayne and Nancy were under the red light, again, which gave Wynne a chance. Shayne talked about wanting to make it to Blackpool so that his mum could see him dance (she hasn’t been able to make it to live shows due to ill health.) Vito proved that he’s genuinely part puppy.

We’d had all the celebs who’d visited (for chips, darts and the illuminations), Shirley and Motsi talk about Blackpool, a Blackpool-centric VT and a picture of little Lauren at the Tower ballroom. Claudia acknowledged they might have gone on about it a bit.

Wynne was like the singing spectre as Michael Ball and Archie Boe sang ‘She ain’t heavy, she’s my Karen’. Absolute treat to see Karen doing ballroomy stuff with lots of lifts and some salsa armography with Kai in a very of-the-night but absolutely gorgeous red dress.

I figured out how Katya’s dress changed this time around, even if I didn’t quite see the moment, and I’m still unconvinced they were in hold for even a third of that American Smooth. I had no strong opinion about who should be saved based on the dance-off – I hadn’t spotted the mistakes – but I wasn’t surprised that Anton favoured Wynne/kicked the final call up to Shirley. As the judges more or less all said, they were very different dance styles. But Shayne’s been in the dance-off more, even if he is probably the better dancer, however much Katya is moulding Wynne.