From Les Dennis’ bumbling moves to Tess’ inability to ad lib – Strictly’s failings were on show despite its ratings
IF Spanish television ever makes a revenge version of Fawlty Towers, I hope we’re all agreed Les Dennis is playing the bumbling British waiter. He’s Manuel all over.
He’s got a bit of the Mr Magoo about him as well and tangos with the frantic bustle of Joe Biden trying to find the khazi in Hampton Court maze.
If he maintains this form, Les may just also keep me and a lot of other neutrals watching the new series of Strictly Come Dancing which, across two episodes and over four hours, eliminated no one and went precisely nowhere, but did successfully reintroduce us to some familiar failings on Saturday night.
The show still has, for instance, only one judge, Craig Revel Horwood, who tells the unvarnished truth and stops the whole enterprise collapsing in one great, saccharine sweet morass of insincerity.
It also remains overburdened with BBC-backed obscurities like Nikita Kanda and hamstrung by a host, Tess Daly, who’s developed a really bad case of “I mean” disease to compensate for the fact she cannot ad lib to save her life.
“I mean, just wow . . . ”
“I mean, you are just a joy.”
“I mean, your energy.”
“I mean, oh.”
Tess is far from alone, of course. This hideous verbal glitch has reached pandemic levels in Britain and is one of the great poxes of the modern television era, along with “like” and “literally”.
Tess, though, simply cannot stop hitting the “I mean” button, which puts a lot of added pressure on Claudia Winkleman up in the gantry.
Her limitations as a presenter are also part of the reason why every series of Strictly really stands or falls on the quality of the contestants who, if you believe their own claims, are a curiously shy, timid and lovably self-effacing bunch, this year.
On the opening episode I lost count, in fact, of the number of celebrity dancers who were doing the show only to conquer their crippling lack of self-confidence or in honour of their dear old mum, lest anyone think they were prancing around in sequins on prime-time telly for the sake of their own vanity and profile.
You know as well as I do, however, Strictly is not like jury service.
No one turns up here by accident and in fairness to the show, it has actually got a few promising bookings among the class of 2023.
The crucial one for me is Les, because the less we laugh at conventional BBC comedy the more we need the release of gloriously unconventional dancers like him and Tony Adams, who set the gold standard on last year’s show.
In this respect, Les may be helped out by Channel 4 smug bucket Krishnan Guru-Murthy, although both were possibly overshadowed on Saturday by the fantastically flexible Angela Rippon, who’s got so much energy and such a manic-looking grin you’d have sworn Kai Widdrington was dancing with both Hinge and Bracket, if you’d watched it drunk. Which, obviously, I didn’t.
I would hope, though, Angela or one of the beginners builds up some voting momentum because, on the evidence of week two, the contest will be a stroll for dance-trained soap actor Nigel Harman, who performed brilliantly but then probably had the production gallery tearing their hair out when he said: “It felt like three weeks just waiting and waiting to perform.”
He’s not exaggerating, either.
For the neutral, it’s a criminally long drag of a show dogged by C-list obscurities, the blandishments of the judges and Tess’s issues.
Yet weighted against all that?
We now have Les Dennis, who announced quite confidently at the top of the show: “I’m hoping to bring all the skills I have as an actor to make it look like I can dance.”
I mean, just wow . . .
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
TIPPING Point, Ben Shephard: “Which famous waterfall located in Africa is named in honour of a 19th century British Queen?”
Tim: “Niagara.”
Ben Shephard: “Dentures are designed to be worn in which part of the human body?”
Mike: “Foot.”
The Finish Line, Roman Kemp: “Josiah Nisbet was the stepson of which British naval hero?”
Tommy: “Napoleon.”
Roman Kemp: “Astronaut Alan Bean was the fourth man to walk where?”
Marva: “Mars.”
Random TV irritations
HBO pulling the plug on the greatest sports drama ever made, Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty.
Strictly’s Love Island recruit Zara McDermott doubling down on the idea she’s a “documentary maker”.
Serial killer-obsessed ITV adding nothing to the Yorkshire Ripper story with The Long Shadow.
And BBC1’s ongoing destruction of Football Focus which will continue for as long as the network puts its demented obsession with gender, race and identity politics ahead of the sport we love.
It’s all a bout Matt
THERE were 16 contestants on the brilliant opening episode of C4’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, but only one money shot.
The serving MP for West Suffolk.
Or, as Foxy called him: “Mr Hancock, without the Han.”
Every member of the production understood this fact as well, including narrator Shaun Dooley, who took some relish introducing the milling round by announcing: “The first fight is recruit number five, former professional footballer Jermaine Pennant.
His opponent? Number one, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock.”
The bout went as well as you’d hoped, for Jermaine, although it wasn’t as spectacular as Hancock’s rolling dismount from the trainasium apparatus or as brutal as his subsequent interrogation by the SAS staff – “Oi, shut the f*** up” – which had me thinking a military dictatorship would be better than every single option on the ballot paper at our next general election.
In support of this wild claim, I’d cite contestant number two, Arg from Towie, who represents that generation (everyone 35 and under) which, thanks to decades of mollycoddling, offers nothing except self-pity, egomania and excuses.
At Tuesday’s milling round, the sulky manchild also demonstrated perfectly how a Government led by Sir Keir Starmer would negotiate with the EU.
Arg offered Perri Shakes-Drayton a non-aggression pact.
She battered him senseless. Roll on the Junta.
INCIDENTALLY, on next week’s rather less engaging episode of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, Gareth Thomas has the recruits playing “drag name”: “You take your grandmother’s first name and your last treat.”
And you end up with….?
Cathy Late Winner From Kenny McLean. Great.
MEANWHILE on the Tudors and Stuarts episode of Sex: A Bonkers History, Amanda Holden asks: “How do you spot a witch?”
Sex historian Kate Lister: “To become a witch you had to meet with Satan, dance naked and you had to perform the osculum infame, or infamous kiss, which basically meant you had to kiss Satan’s a***hole.”
At which point the deal is done and Simon Cowell renews Amanda’s BGT contract.
CELEBRITY Help! My House Is Haunted, Jake Quickenden’s mum: “Jake would have really bad night terrors.
It was as though he was reliving a past life.”
Paranormal Investigator Barri Ghai: “So do you think energies have followed him around?”
No, he’s just getting over Hollyoaks.
Great TV lies and delusions of the month.
Your Power, Your Control, Nish Kumar: “Most of what my job is involves telling jokes about the news.”
Jokes?
My Family And Me, Ferne McCann: “I think I’m looking sexy AF right now.”
As Feltz?
And Strictly Come Dancing, Les Dennis: “I always have that impostor syndrome that I can’t do something, but I can.”
You can’t.
TV Gold
TOBY JONES acting everyone else into the scenery on The Long Shadow.
Channel 4’s Pete Doherty: Who Killed My Son?
Harry Judd’s redoubtable mum Emma turning out to be the real star of Celebrity Race Across The World.
Every single winner of our Channel 4 Who Cares Wins awards showing actors how an acceptance speech should be made (calmly, modestly and briefly).
The Wheel contestant Colin nailing £92,000 for the Dwarf Sports Association.
And Matt Hancock’s perfectly scripted tumble off the trainasium apparatus on a sublime first episode of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins: “If you can imagine the finish line is five steps away, you can always make it . . . argh, aaargh, AAAAAAAARGH. B*ks.”
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Everton owner Farhad Moshiri and Penfold from Danger Mouse.
Great sporting insights
KRIS BOYD: “The difference was the front four, Kane, Foden and Rashford.”
Paul Merson: “I think Burnley v Man Utd will be a football match.”
And Martin Keown: “It’s a real mouth in the heart moment.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)