Strictly steamy!
Debbie’s impromptu kiss with dance hunk as live shows return raunchier than ever
STRICTLY Come Dancing’s first live show got off to a racy start with steamy performances all round.
Debbie McGee, 58, thrilled with high kicks and even the splits – as judges said she ‘danced like a 20-year-old’. To top off her routine, she shocked partner Giovanni Pernice with an unplanned kiss. Meanwhile, East-Enders star Davood Ghadami, 5, won praise for a ‘smoking hot’ cha cha with Slovenian beauty Nadiya Bychkova.
Saturday’s BBC1 show peaked at 10.2million viewers and was the mostwatched programme of the day.
Pickle me walnuts and stop messing abaht! Since len Goodman shuffled off to the Palais de Pipe and Slippers, Strictly fans have been worried that his absence would prove calamitous to the muchloved show.
can i be honest here? After the glitter onslaught of Saturday night’s 140 minute extravaganza, i didn’t miss the old boy at all. Not one bit.
Over the last few years, head judge len had been dialling in his performance; often a little bit joyless under his flinty bonhomie, increasingly cantankerous and forever over-reliant on his trusty number 7 paddle.
Dare i even mention his weekly, treacly, bleakly verdicts that were a crime against rhyme? Best not.
in his stead comes Shirley Ballas, the former champion latin dancer who made a triumphant if slightly bizarre debut.
With her spectacles, fingernails and lipstick all painted the same shade of don’t- mess- with- me crimson, Shirley has the natural authority of a woman who was once perhaps Headmistress of cha cha Academy before being promoted to Governess of Twirling at the Bolshy Ballet. On her first show she survived being groped by fellow judge Bruno Tonioli and mistakenly calling contestant chizzy Akudolu ‘lizzy’. embarrassing!
She was bold enough to correct one of Darcey Bussell’s rambling bits of advice to a luckless contestant. Darcey dropped her usual drunken duchess persona (yah, faaaabulous) and looked for a moment like someone who had just knocked back a tot of neat vinegar.
Shirley didn’t seem to notice. Booming on in her weird, posh Merseyside accent – known to linguists as la Di Dah Scouse – she seems determined to be the technically superior but supportive and kindly judge. like a mum buying a school blazer in August, she insisted to all the clodhopper contestants that there was ‘plenty of room for growth’. len wouldn’t have been so kind. len who?
With his fake tan nozzle set to Deep Teak, perhaps it was apt that comedian Brian conley moved around the floor with all the grace of a felled telegraph pole – yet Shirley insisted that she was impressed by his ‘ heel leads, promenade and attempted contra- check’. Yes, but that was when he was going through the security inspection at the BBC studios.
The Rev Richard coles stumbled around like a man inside an inflatable zorb ball, but Shirley praised his ‘syncopated cuban break’. Whassat? Something you do to your ankle that necessitates an ambulance?
SHE even told comedienne Susan calman that she was ‘ impressed by your fleckerl’. Yes, we all got a glimpse of it when the hem on Susan’s lampshade dress began floating around her middle like a recalcitrant parachute during her Viennese waltz.
However, the new head judge wasn’t always so technical. She instructed Gemma Atkinson to ‘stand on your leg more’ and advised Alexandra Burke to ‘focus on your legs and feet’, which seemed dangerously close to stating the obvious.
Despite his faults, len Goodman was a stickler for the rules of ballroom and Strictly needed someone with dance integrity to fill his patent shoes. Miss Ballas seems to have done that admirably, striking a balance between entertainment and accessibility with expertise and gravity.
elsewhere, the 15th series looks promising indeed, with an appealing cast of celebrities who have left the place they all refer to as My comfort Zone to tiptoe into the ballroom of broken dreams.
There were two full kisses, a lot of misses and host Tess Daly still talking to all the contestants as if they were dim toddlers she was shepherding into a Tumble Tots class. ‘Has that made you happy?’ she asked one contestant, as if he’d just been given a jumbo pack of Percy Pigs.
There was the usual flock of young pop stars and soap actors with their fixed smiles and eyes on the main prize, but on this first week, it was the oldies who shone.
The Rev Richard coles is this year’s adorable, plucky lead footed no hoper in the John Sargeant/ Jeremy Vine/ed Balls mould. in his white suit and quietly determined swagger, the Rev is doing more good for the church of england than a thousand tombola stalls ever could. The expression of joy on his face as he dad-danced through his number was a tonic and a blessing.
The real revelation was Debbie McGee, weeks shy of her 59th birthday, her ballet training three decades in the past, but still dancing with the vigour of a sexually repressed chorus girl.
MUSCLES have a memory and it was clear that Debbie’s have forgotten nothing. it was time to ramp up her inner vamp as she stormed through her paso doble like a woman possessed. Her late husband Paul Daniels – who appeared on the show himself – would have been proud.
And that is what i like about Strictly come Dancing. For beneath all the spangles and razzmatazz runs the thread of something elusive but profound. People really do push themselves to new limits in impressive ways.
Debbie McGee is a widow, never an easy ticket for any woman. And perhaps you have to get old yourself to understand that getting older is not easy, no matter who you are or how famous you might be. That’s why seeing Debbie out there, in her scarlet chiffon and gold heels, tearing up the dance floor and kissing a much younger man, made the heart swell.
in addition, her chasse steps were perfect and her back bends incredible. listen to me! i’ve gone all Shirley – but that is no bad thing.