Les Dennis says he’s having the ‘best time’ despite age
Fifteen Strictly Come Dancing contestants, all very different personalities with varied experience and opinions but on Saturday night all feeling just one thing: “Please please please let the person going home NOT be me!”
There’s nothing quite as humiliating as being chucked off a TV show first.
Go home second, third or fourth and your humiliation is shrouded in the mists of time.
No one quite remembers the exact level of your humiliation.
By some miracle – and I’ve done a surfeit of reality TV – I’ve managed to avoid being first on the bus home but survivors testify the anguish never quite subsides.
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The first two Strictlys are a breeze. It’s all new and sparkly. The judges are rested and in benevolent mode.
You might fall flat on your face or – as Lulu did in 2011 – forget your routine so completely your professional has to pick you up and carry you around the floor, but you’ll live to dance another week. There’s no brutal eviction looming.
Show three is an entirely different matter. Suddenly everything is deadly serious. The judges – especially leaderine Shirley Ballas – are bristly and businesslike. There’s no more schmooze and sweetness.
If it all goes Pete Tong you might be the wretched individual packing your bags and watching the rest of the series on the sofa at home.
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Strictly speedily separates into categories: the contestants who actually danced for a living, who insist ballroom is an entirely different discipline so they count as novices, the contestants who danced every day at stage school but insist ballroom’s a different discipline so they have no advantage and the genuine newbies – Annabel Croft, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Les Dennis, Jody Cundy, Bobby Brazier, Zara McDermott, Nikita Kanda, Eddie Kadi – who have never danced in public except to a Grease medley at a wedding.
We’ve all heard the old chestnut about Strictly needing recruits of varying standards to make good telly but none of us can help rooting for the non-dancers over the polished professionalism of the seasoned on-stage hoofers.
We’re all eager for the ‘journey’.
So it’s a sad farewell to game and loveable Les Dennis.
He danced his heart out but put the granddad into dad dancing.
We were willing him on with all our might but couldn’t disagree with Craig Revel-Horwood’s damning verdict: ‘Limp, lame, lacklustre’. We’ll miss Les.
He’s an entertainer of the old school and so endearingly eager to please.
How is Les feeling right now? Well, comedian Rory Bremner, alumnus 2011, described the sensation as “being chucked off a beautiful bright bus aboard which your best friends are laughing joking and quaffing champagne”.
In other words: it hurts like hell. Les should take comfort from the fact that Angela Rippon, currently being lauded by the judges and worshipped by the viewers, was voted off Dancing on Ice first in 2011 after “a safe and boring routine”. Maybe he should try a pair of skates next year?
I thought Shirley was a tad testy with Nigel Harman, lambasting his “fleckerl footwork” with energetic disapproval.
Annabel Croft’s lovely lyrical Quickstep also got short shrift and I’m not sure Craig’s “a bit stompy” was the most sensitive upsum of paralympian Jody Cundy’s bravura performance.
I’m mystified by the judges’ misty-eyed praise for Krishnan’s flailing arms and air of shocked dismay and wish they’d wake up to Eddie’s ebullient talent.
How long can it be till Angela Rippon is cast as Anna in The King and I in a West End production and nobody even thinks to mention her age?
The smart money so far is on Layton Williams and Bobby Brazier, but in my dreams, Angela hauls home the Glitterball.
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