Many thought he wouldn’t make it past the first week. Plenty believed his heart-in-mouth performance of the American Smooth, in which he nearly dropped partner Katya Jones on her head, would be his last.
But after eight weeks of groin thrusts, helicopter arms and visible counting of almost every step, Ed Balls is limbering up for what is promised to be his most exuberant Strictly Come Dancing performance yet on Saturday night – a jive to the tune of Jerry Lee Lewis’s Great Balls of Fire.
Before the competition began, the former shadow chancellor’s odds of getting this far in the BBC1 dancing competition were put at 66/1. But after winning enough public votes every week to avoid the risk of elimination by the show’s judges, Balls is considered only the third most likely to be sent home this week, behind athlete Greg Rutherford and TV judge Robert Rinder.
Even the odds of him winning, according to the bookmakers at least, are shortening with every “mind-blowing performance”.
“Forget Leicester or Donald Trump winning,” said a spokesman for Paddy Power. “This could be the biggest upset of the year.”
Key to the former shadow chancellor’s success on the show has been a succession of performances which, if not exactly conforming to all the traditional rules of dance, are at least highly entertaining – and highly shareable on social media. Balls and Jones won a place in Saturday’s show at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom with a rendition of Psy’s 2012 hit Gangnam Style, complete with pony dancing and pelvic thrusts.
A video of the routine, which left the politician on his back panting for breath, has attracted nearly 500,000 views on YouTube and 3.4m views on Facebook. Judge Bruno Tonioli described the performance as the “best worst dance I’ve ever seen”.
If a couple is voted in the bottom two by the public they go head-to-head and the judges decide who should be eliminated from the competition. Judge Craig Revel Horwood told the Radio Times that if Balls were to find himself in the final two, he would be out straightaway. Though he added: “Much to my surprise, he actually keeps good timing.”
Actor Danny Mac, who appeared in the soap opera Hollyoaks, is currently the bookies’ favourite to win the show, with odds of 6/5, with singer Louise Redknapp the second favourite, with odds of 5/2.
Last week, model Daisy Lowe and her professional dancing partner Aljaž Škorjanec were voted out after eight weeks in the competition. Danny Mac and his partner Oti Mabuse topped the leaderboard for the second week running with an Argentinian Tango.
Aeron Davis, professor of political communication at Goldsmiths University, said it was possible that in the year Donald Trump became US president and Boris Johnson became foreign secretary, Balls’s appearance on Strictly Come Dancing could be what was needed to resuscitate his public image.
“If we look at what has happened to British politics and we look at American politics, the game has really changed quite significantly,” said Davis. “Appearing on a reality TV show and having a popular frontline face and being able to use media in other ways, new media and old media, can get you quite far now.
“Boris Johnson was building momentum through Have I Got News for You for years. He was a figure of fun, but he managed to hit the right notes in order to become London mayor and get a seat in parliament.” Though Davis admits that the Labour leadership would need to change for that to be a possibility for Balls.
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