A classic ding-dong final with all the trimmings
with an injury. He’d been given just four minutes to make up his mind about participating. All these months later he lift the Glitterball gong and smiled like someone who had woken to find themselves still in a dream.
“I think this show represents everything that is amazing with this country,” he said. The result was decided by public vote – just as well for Fletcher and Mabuse, as they placed second on the studio judges leaderboard, behind CBBC host Karim Zeroual and Amy Dowden.
Fletcher and Mabuse had to work hard for their victory, in which they triumphed over enthusiastic competition from EastEnders star Emma Barton and Anton du Beke and Zeroual and Dowden. It was a tense decider, brimming with thrills, spills and courtesy of the eventual champions, electric pink vests that lit up Elstree Studios like lipstick firecrackers. With no clear favourite, viewers will have been on tenterhooks to the very end. In other words, classic, ding-dong Strictly with all the trimmings.
“The things you do with your hips,” marvelled judge Bruno Tonioli to Fletcher after he and Mabuse rounded off the evening with a simmering samba. “What you have achieved over the last 13 weeks is extraordinary.”
But there were glitches. Such was the deluge of public votes, some viewers complained they couldn’t register their preference online or by phone.
Strictly’s 17th series has been an engaging underdog story and the final served as exquisite cherry on top. Fletcher was parachuted in after the launch episode had already aired.
Yet from this standing start, he won
Strictly Come Dancing Final over viewers with his determination and charisma. He also struck up an instant chemistry with Mabuse.
On the subject of underdogs, Strictly die-hards will have been cheering veteran pro du Beke, appearing in just his second final. The perennial Strictly bridesmaid finally had his lucky turn this year when EastEnders’ Barton was revealed to have the twinkliest toes in all of Albert Square.
Strictly doesn’t really do “villains” and Zeroual was there on merit. Still, there had been grumblings that he had pushed himself to the limits on the show, once spending 11 hours training in a single day. Was that allowed?
He pulled out all the stops once more in the final. For favourite dance he and his pro partner Dowden (in her first final) reprised their jive to You Can’t Stop the Beat. Fletcher and Mabuse did a samba to La Vida Es Un
Carnaval. And Barton and du Beke danced a Viennese Waltz.
The Judges Pick section saw Emma and Anton tackling a Charleston, Karim and Amy a quickstep and Kelvin and Oti a rumba. And the showdance round featured Emma and Anton performing a routine to Let Yourself Go, Karim and Amy grooving to A Million Dreams, and Kelvin and Oti bopping to the Isley Brothers.
There was also a performance from Taylor Swift, no doubt aware she was gracing British entertainment’s biggest shop window.
Ratings have been solid this year, knocking flailing X Factor into a cocked trilby.
This was an early Christmas treat tied up with a shiny bow. And in Fletcher and Mabuse it gave us a champions more than deserving of their place in the hoofing hall of fame.