AMANDA PLATELL: Strictly’s cursed by its personal stupidity. It’s misplaced the plot… and I do know who’s accountable

After Saturday night’s Strictly Halloween special aired, embellished with more sexual flourishes and crotch flashes than a paso doble, I wonder if our once-beloved family show has finally lost the plot. Strictly truly might be cursed – by its own stupidity.

What on earth possessed judges Craig Revel Horwood and Anton Du Beke to turn up in tiny, pale-blue, baby-doll dresses? Yes, they were dressing up for the spooky special as The Shining’s twin sisters – but it was downright creepy seeing two men in their late fifties dressed as coquettish schoolgirls.

Their delving into the risqué might have been a desperate bid to stanch the haemorrhage of well over a million viewers who have abandoned Strictly this season, in what should have been their glorious 20th year anniversary – but it seemed more appropriate for a fetish website than a ballroom competition.

 Strictly Come Dancing fans have gone wild for Nikita Kuzmin who stepped onto the dancefloor wearing stockings and suspenders

But it didn’t stop there. Even after ‘gropegate’, which saw pro partner Katya Jones appear to frostily push away the hand of her partner, the Go Compare opera singer Wynne Jones, their dance on Saturday included plenty of lifts in which his face was buried in her undies.

And don’t get me started on the crotch shots. I lost count at eight as pro Vito Coppola repeatedly lifted a spread-eagled Sarah Hadland over his head for their Argentine tango. 

It was almost as disturbing as watching Nikita Kuzmin‘s jive with ‘celebrity’ Sam Quek as he ripped his clothes off to reveal a tiny black basque, suspenders and stockings more appropriate for a sleazy Blackpool end-of-the-pier drag night than Strictly’s dancefloor.

And will someone please get a grip on head judge Shirley Ballas, who was wearing a huge red wig portraying Winifred Sanderson from Hocus Pocus and so enthralled with her own wonderfulness that she spoke for the entirety of the show in the character’s ridiculous voice. It was excruciatingly awful TV. When did the judges start thinking they were the real stars of the show?

Comedian Chris McCausland and his professional dance partner Dianne Buswell opened Halloween week with a Samba to the Bee Gees disco tune Stayin’ Alive. They scored 26 out of 40

Which brings me to another problem: most of us had never heard of this year’s female celebrities. Gone are the days when we had big names like Jerry Hall, Esther Rantzen, Alesha Dixon, Emma Bunton, Penny Lancaster, Natasha Kaplinsky, Felicity Kendal, Lulu and Ann Widdecombe, to name but a few.

Much of that it is claimed is thanks to Amanda Abbington’s ongoing psychodrama against her former dance partner Giovanni Pernice and the BBC, which sources say has scared off any proper female celebrities from participating in the 2024 series.

And now, despite having spent £250,000 on the investigation into Amanda’s claims of brutal treatment – the most serious of which against Gio were dismissed – BBC bosses this week for further discussions. Meanwhile, Gio is topping the leaderboard on the Italian version of the show after her accusations forced him to quit the UK.

What on earth possessed judges Craig Revel Horwood and Anton Du Beke to turn up in tiny, pale-blue, baby-doll dresses?

What an own goal for the Beeb to lose one of their best and most popular dancers over accusations which ended up being mostly dismissed.

But this is just one in a litany of scandals that has plagued Strictly in recent years. Viewers have also accused the judges of rigging the scores of celebrities they want to keep in the show, to the detriment of other, better dancers. On that note, why when they have to save one of the two celebs in the dance-off, do all the judges always back the same person?

BBC chiefs led a six-month investigation into Amanda Abbington ‘s explosive allegations that her Strictly partner Giovanni bullied her in training 

I’m a lifelong Strictly fan who has watched the show since the very beginning and even have my own Saturday night Strictly fan club. But the magic has gone out of the show. The jewel of Saturday night family viewing has lost its sparkle.

Instead of watching it live, we now assemble at my home for drinks and then start recording the show when it starts at 6.30pm. We only start watching an hour into its 150 interminable minutes, as each episode has become more padded than a Chesterfield sofa.

We fast-forward through all the boring bits – of which there are now so many. The episodes are littered with stupid skits by celebrities and judges who can’t act just to lengthen the show. But all we’re interested in is the dancing, the scores and the original Strictly promise that it would be a show that taught amateurs how to dance. As a result, we get through the entire show in about 30 minutes.

Now the line-up is stuffed full of celebs with previous dancing experience, it’s not a fair fight. This season features Love Island’s Tasha Ghouri, a professionally trained dancer, JB Gill, a former member of the boyband JLS with a wealth of experience dancing in music videos and EastEnders’ Jamie Borthwick who trained in performing arts with the Sylvia Young Theatre School and won the 2023 Christmas special dancing with pro Nancy Xu.

The amateurs don’t stand a chance, yet still Strictly maintains the facade that it is true to its founding principle.

The show has sunk so low that even Claudia Winkleman’s fringe and Tess Daley’s body-hugging Lycra dresses can’t save it. Nor will the increasingly irritating judges – especially attention-seeking Shirley and Motsi Mabuse, who scatter top scores to mediocre dancers like cheap confetti at a budget wedding.

Perhaps the only person who can really save Strictly is the blind comedian Chris McCausland, whose odds are 1/3 to lift the glitterball.

He entered the competition as a true amateur, saying: ‘My concern was that it would be a disaster, a car crash,’ yet that ‘the whole point of being here is to surprise people, to expose people to someone they might think would be incapable of doing these things.’

Despite the judges’ best efforts, regularly putting him at the bottom of the leader board, it’s we viewers who keep voting Chris back in. Perhaps because, although he’s not a perfect dancer, he embodies the show’s original premise.

How ironic that a blind man is the only one who can see what Strictly should really be about.