TANGOING, GOING...GONE? But Rinder backs Ed against judges who want to oust him
EVERYONE expected him to get the bullet in Blackpool.
And after judge Darcey Bussell last week said she wanted him ‘out’, Ed Balls’s future on Strictly was looking decidedly shaky.
But if all those guns pointing at the former Shadow Chancellor have unnerved him, he wasn’t letting it show last night as he tangoed like a rock god with partner Katya Jones.
Ed wowed the crowd as he pranced and preened his way through the Rolling Stones classic (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.
Balls – who has claimed Strictly has ‘released his inner Beyoncé’ – threw himself into sexually charged moves, thrusting his hips forward and putting on his best pout as he clutched a pink flower on a chaise longue.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘Ed told me he wanted to channel his inner Zoolander, so there would be pouting.’
But his theatrics predictably failed to impress the judges, who relegated him to the bottom of the leaderboard once again.
Despite suggestions that Balls, 49, has lasted longer in the competition than he deserves to, he received support from an unlikely source yesterday – rival contestant Judge Robert Rinder, who declared: ‘He’s a good dancer. The reality is that on every fair and objective standard, every week he tries his hardest and improves.’
Balls has dismissed any chance of the Strictly curse hitting his marriage to Yvette Cooper, saying: ‘I’m happily married. Katya is happily married and half my age. There is no element of that at all – but there is an intensity and camaraderie which is quite deep.’