So who’ll be Strictly’s next tubby villain? Philip Green?
THE round, sweaty face is the thing that gets me. The rigor mortis smile, as fake as Victoria Beckham’s breasts. The lack of humility, given the fact it was his lot who wrecked our economy, caused the value of my house to plummet by a third.
I can even smell the adrenaline on him: not caused by regret, but by fear that he won’t be able to keep Yvette in shrunken green cardigans and bad hairdos, which is why he’s doing this TV show in the first place.
What I most hate about Ed Balls doing Strictly Come Dancing is that the guilt is being obscured by gilt: glitter on his shoulders like so much festive dandruff.
He’s being embraced – and voted for, no less! Oh, the irony! – not just by partner Katya Jones but by a soporific nation, lulled by a soft breeze from Claudia Winkleman’s eyelashes.
Why he’s still in the show, given he is as immovable as Theresa May faced by Francois Hollande, I have no idea.
Performing on Strictly Come Dancing is a get-out-of-jail card that makes me wonder who will be cast next year.
Philip Green? He has the obligatory porcine stature. His face is already red, slick with sweat. But it is not just Ed Balls’s presence that makes me detest Strictly so.
Nor is it that I’ve barely heard of any of the other ‘celebrities’ taking part. (On Friday evening, watching Zoe Ball hyperventilate over on BBC2, I had no idea, out of Laura Whitmore and Giovanni Pernice, which was the star, which the professional dancer.)
Nor is it even the bad jokes and stock phrases emitted by the judges, who surely have a large hand up their backsides, operating them.
It is that this show is televisual Temazepam. Government propaganda. Foreigners with difficult names are nice, really, aren’t they, so sweet and eager and obliging as long as they are kept in their place in the service industries.
Fat people can lose inches off their waists as long as they keep on moving. Older women are not to be feared: look how harmless they are. Young black men are smiley!
The show’s coming and goings are reported on with all the over-excitedness of when Germany invaded Poland: Will Young ‘breaks his Strictly silence’ on the radio about why he unexpectedly left the show (it was for ‘personal reasons’, which left us all none the wiser).
There are endless musings on social media about why nobody votes for model Daisy Lowe (because she has all the charisma of a tree trunk!). But I cannot understand why this programme, which reached a new nadir last week, with its ‘Halloween special’ – exactly how old are the contestants? 12? – is the biggest thing on TV right now, averaging nine million viewers last year.
It’s not that I am more fond of The X Factor on the other side. Both programmes are fake, manufactured. Backstage at The X Factor a few years ago, I discovered the judges remained sequestered in their own dressing rooms, large bouncers with walkie-talkies placed outside the door, communicating with their charges mostly via email.
In the wings for the opening night of this season of Strictly, I finally found out why the audience members are always so ecstatic. They have a metaphorical gun to their blue-rinsed heads, beaten into submission by a warm-up comic.
‘No, no, no!’ he bellowed so loudly we all cowered. ‘I want you on your feet, more enthusiasm, more smiling! Let’s do it again! Pretend it’s your wedding night! There’s only one more dance to come, I promise!’
CUE a mass upending of the tiny boxes of juice, handed out to each of us four hours earlier. Like the muchlauded period drama Victoria on ITV, which papered over our nation’s history (Victoria’s empire was responsible for millions of Indians dying from starvation; do read Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocausts), Strictly is covering up the cracks in the post-Brexit economy.
Week Seveerrrn unfolded last night, with Ed and Katya (you see, just using his first name already makes him seem far more human) performing the quickstep to The Beatles’ Help!
I’d have preferred something by Elton John: Sorry seems to be the hardest word, perhaps?