From Hero to Zero

By Blog on the Box on Nov 20, 08 12:31 PM

He was, it has to be said, not the best contestant in Strictly Come Dancing but John Sergeant got my vote. He was a hero who defied the odds to avoid the dreaded dance-off and return the following week...and the following week...and the following week. But by his decision to quit he became a zero in an instant.

I don't know what prompted him to go. It may be the savage back-stabbing from the judges or he may have booked other commitments in the expectation he would never have got this far and, let's face it, we could all do with a cruise.

But the public put their trust in him and expected him to keep that trust. By walking away John has betrayed that trust and slapped the faces of those members of the public who supported him through thin and thin.

His departure might have pleased the judges but it does the show's credibility, if it had any in the first place, no good at all.

The real jokers in the pack are, I suggest, the quartet of judges who continually insist of feeding their own egos. Here's my comments on the four:

Arlene Philips, who kicked John in interviews before his resignation, has showed herself to be a shrill-voiced little minx who banged on about how Strictly Come Dancing was a serious dance competition. No, it isn't, it never was, and never will be. It was a light entertainment show that took a life of its own by the public's support for the judges' whipping boy. It was, perhaps, the savaging of John by the judges that made him so popular.

Len Goodman was usually the best-natured of the judges but even he joined in the gang's attack on John. Despite his generous scoring his booming voice is a reminder that he used to be a professional footballer who got into dancing when a foot injury ruined his first career. That's worth repeating: he got into dancing (?) because of a foot injury?

Bruno Tonioli seems to have come from the Chuckle Brothers stable of entertainers. His animated posturings belong in children's TV instead of a high-ratings Saturday/Sunday show. I'm expecting him to say "To me, to you" any day now or develop a stand-up routine with Len Goodman as the straight-man.

Craig Revel Horwood has the reputation of being the harshest judge and with good reason. It was him who gave John a score of one and complained because he didn't have a lollipop (the scores are on strange lollipops kept under the counter until the moment of revelation) with zero on it.

The judges were wrong to get all pouty about John's success on the show but events showed Craig to be right in one regard: John turned out to deserve that zero after all but for different reasons.