Strictly no more Claudia, please
Sir Bruce ForSyth has finally tap-danced off to that great autocue in the wings, leaving the BBc with a glitterball sized headache. Who or what to replace him?
Filling those twinkling patent shoes will not be easy, but that has not stopped them from apparently settling for the easiest option. claudia Winkleman. No! yes! the Walking Fringe is hot favourite to replace Brucie on Strictly come Dancing, which returns in the autumn. Please say it is not so.
they might as well spread the dance floor with syrup and sack the bandleader. it would be a bigger disaster t han Nancy Dell’olio’s rumba.
Nothing wrong with claudia personally. it is j ust that she favours a modish style of television presenting that i like to call Modern ironic.
this means that neither the proceedings nor the participants are taken seriously. And anyway, they must always play a secondary role to the presenters.
Modern ironic is also practised by Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins on the Great British Bake off, increasingly by Kirstie Allsopp and reaches its peak with the dreadful Keith Allen.
claudia’s tone seldom veers from sly mocking. if we could see her eyebrows, i suspect they would be permanently raised in a quizzical metropolitan way.
on the Great British Sewing Bee, which has just ended on BBc2, claudia insisted on addressing the contestants as if they were naughty infants who’d just done a whoopsie on the naughty step.
in my darkest moments, i even l ong f or the sober return of Katie Boyle, who never played it for laughs.
the mistress of the shampoo and set and organdie overlay might not have known what was going on, but at least she never stooped to flighty sarcasm.