Ed Balls will have to cheer up and “look as if he is enjoying himself a bit more” if he has any hope of remaining in Strictly Come Dancing, his dance floor predecessor Ann Widdecombe has said.
Widdecombe, who, like Balls, was a senior politician before she made her own memorable appearance on the programme six years ago, said Balls “has to look as if he is having fun”. His first-week waltz with partner Katya Jones earned the lowest points of any of the 15 contestants.
Coral has made the former Labour shadow chancellor odds-on favourite, at 4-6, to be the first dancer eliminated this weekend, after one critic described him as having “the grace of Thomas the Tank Engine”.
Balls will return with Jones on Saturday night to dance the charleston, for which he has said he plans to channel the fictional scarecrow Worzel Gummidge. The eviction, based partly on a public vote, will take place the following evening.
Widdecombe – who survived to week 10 of the 2010 series despite, or possibly because of a highly individual dancing style (“I wouldn’t call that dancing, dear”) – told the Guardian that Balls’s performance in the waltz had been much better than her own. “But at least I looked as if I was enjoying it,” she said.
“Really, honestly. Last week he was so stiff and he didn’t really smile. You have got to look as if you are enjoying it, and then the public thinks, oh good, let’s have him back next time. He really does need to put heart and soul into looking happy next time.”
Balls has said he has “never felt further outside [his] comfort zone” since joining the hit BBC1 show, but declared: “I am not in this for the laughs. I’m determined to work hard, do my best and try to improve.” After concentrating ferociously during his waltz, he told the programme’s judges he was “madly disappointed” with his performance.
According to Widdecombe, a former Tory MP, that may be the problem. “I am quite sure if Peter Mandelson had done it he would have been a very serious dancer,” she said. “But Ed Balls I don’t think is a serious dancer, and therefore he has got to look as if he is having fun.”
In response to Widdecombe’s advice Balls tweeted
Good advice from Ann Widdecombe - I'm off to practice ! https://t.co/92aHA7sC03
— Ed Balls (@edballs) September 30, 2016
One friend of Balls said he had been giving dance training his all. “He is a great trier, so as you can imagine, he has been putting everything into it,” the friend said. “When he was asked, of course he knew he couldn’t match the others. But Ed is Ed. He will take on any challenge.”
Rupert Adams, a spokesman for William Hill, said the bookmaker had taken the choice of dance into account when offering its own odds of 8-11 that Balls would be the first evicted. “We think they have chosen the charleston because he will make such a prat of himself that people will want to keep him in,” he said. “We definitely expect very few points – but that might mean that he could stay.”
Despite their political differences in the past, Widdecombe said she hoped Balls would survive for at least another week. “Edwina Currie was the first one out [in 2011]. I don’t want a pattern set in which the politician is always the first one voted off.”
Currie, who said of her own early exit “we wuz robbed”, summarised Balls’s chances of winning enough votes to stay in: “It’ll be up to the viewers, but I don’t think the Corbynistas will be watching.”
