This year’s final of Strictly Come Dancing came at the end of what we aficionados like to term an “interesting” season. As Sir Bruce Forsyth had hung up his tap shoes, the show was hosted by two female presenters, Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman (yes, two women all on their own), and the world of Saturday night light entertainment seemed to cope extremely well with this unprecedented state of affairs.
Then, of course, there were the dancers, or in Judy Murray’s case “A wildly grinning jerky person who wore a sparkly dress and staggered blindly about the stage as if recently stunned by falling bricks.” You couldn’t call what Murray did “dancing” exactly, though it was very nice of her to turn up and amuse us all. Considering what her son does for a living it’s perhaps fitting that she turned out to be an extremely good sport. Of course, Murray didn’t make it to the end – that would have been a travesty, or as some of us would have put it, “Excellent!” Those who reached the final were Frankie Bridge from the Saturdays (paired with dancer Kevin Clifton), reality TV star Mark Wright (Karen Hauer), Simon Webbe from Blue (Kristina Rihanoff), and presenter Caroline Flack (Pasha Kovalev).
As always, the contestants had to impress judges Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli (the human spiraliser), Craig Revel-Horwood (sporting facial hair like Zorro), and Darcey Bussell, with a series of dances designed to show off how much they had learned, and to share their feelings about being on Strictly.
Naturally the dreaded j-word (journey) was never far from people’s lips. We were also only about 20 seconds in before somebody lunged for the “rollercoaster” cliché. Not long after that, came the “We’re a Strictly family” speeches, as finalists competed with each other to prove how much their lives had been enhanced by getting to know each other in the spray tan booths all these weeks. I’m not sneering (honest) – part of the fun of Strictly is the frequent feeling that you have fallen down some portal into “Gushing Luvvie Heaven”.
As the dances began (A samba here, a charleston there, a cha cha cha somewhere else), it was proved beyond doubt that “something” had been learned – even if in Wright’s case it was only that mouthing the words to the song you are dancing to may not be the most cultured approach. Notorious on the show for crying when he was in the bottom two, and sometimes even when he wasn’t, Wright was dressed in a sparkly black singlet that made him resemble a Chippendale who had lost his way in a town centre.
Wright was the first to go, leaving Bridge, Flack and Webbe to battle it out. After a medley by the new-look Take That trio (if they keep losing members at this rate, soon it will just be a hologram of Gary Barlow projected on to a pillowcase), there was a dance by all the other Strictly contestants. The talented former contestants such as Pixie Lott and Jake Wood boogied at the front, while the, erm, less-blessed ones stumbled about at the back like drunks at a New Year’s Eve bus stop.
Finally, the winner was announced. For my money, Webbe’s Argentine tango was the showstopping dance of the evening, but the crown went to a deserving Flack – the first person in Strictly history to get three sets of perfect 40s in the final. Congratulations to Ms Flack, and also to Strictly Come Dancing for another great series – as always, never less than a complete hoot.
