Chris McCausland saved Strictly but the ungrateful BBC rewarded him with the biggest insult imaginable

KNUCKLE-CHEWING mortification is almost guaranteed every December at BBC1’s Sports Personality Of The Year.

Even more so on Tuesday, when Alex Scott announced “the Strictly Come Dancing judges will have their say on our six contenders, later in the show”.

Beg, plead and bribe them as much as you like, though, not a force on earth could stop the BBC going ahead with the idea or Claudia ­saying: “First up, Jude Bellingham. Anton?”

“He’s elegant on the ball, athletic in the air. A true star.”

On and on it went as well, with Shirley Ballas offering her opinions on Keely Hodgkinson, Craig Revel Horwood adding his thoughts on Luke Littler, nobody persuading me they had the first clue what they were talking about, but all of them reminding me of the one salient fact.

Wickedly raucous

The BBC values dancing far more than it does sport, which is one reason why the ­corporation should name a W1 meeting room in honour of Chris McCausland.

For not only did the comedian save their precious franchise, following the Giovanni Pernice/Amanda Abbington fallout, he also rescued it from some of the worst instincts of the show itself, where a lazy booking process had left him up against two dancers who were professionally trained, Sarah Hadland and Tasha Ghouri, and a third, JB Gill, who’d already taken part in ITV’s Dance Dance Dance.

A win for one of those three would’ve killed any memory of the last three months.

Fortunately, the result was never in serious doubt, as was made clear by Anton du Beke whose astonishing levels of self-obsession didn’t, for once, let him down when he apologised to Chris and admitted: “My imagination was that you’d be in hold the whole time and creep around the floor.”

It’s a guilty feeling that was shared by a lot of viewers and certainly what I expected from him.

 We could not, however, have been more gloriously wrong.

Chris could dance and also possessed a wickedly raucous and self-deprecating sense of humour that probably won him the series back on September’s opening show when he shouted: “Dianne’s absolutely over the moon to get me because she wants November off.”

As immune as the comedian also was to preachiness and self-pity, however, there was nothing even he could do to resist the hideous contagion of crying that took over Saturday’s final.

Who or what exactly started it, I can’t be 100 per cent sure, but one minute the night was progressing quite inoffensively, the next Motsi Mabuse was dabbing away at her eyes saying: “I’m sorry for people who think crying isn’t the coolest thing in town.”

It then headed up to the balcony, where Claudia confirmed: “Just to let you know, everyone up here was crying as well.”

They want to give him his own BBC comedy show, the ungrateful bastards

And from that point onwards, the dance contest was replaced by a game of competitive crying eventually won by Anton sniffing: “I didn’t want to cry, but I’ve started crying and I can imagine all of ­Liverpool crying as well.”

I felt Shirley could possibly have upped the stakes here by claiming it was “the entire world crying”, but Craig chose that moment to read out a poem in honour of Chris that was so mawkishly s**t I sense “the entire world” might start heaving its guts up if I reproduced any of it here.

Nothing, however, including Chris and Dianne’s victory, should disguise the feeling that the show, which lost several hundred thousand viewers this year, is still a production in a state of gradual decline that’ll only be hastened by rubbish bookings, emotional incontinence and the insane urge to turn the one antidote to all of the judges’ craven gushing, Craig Revel Horwood, into just another Strictly ­sycophant.

Biggest insult

For now, though, it lives and you’d hope the BBC comes up with a better reward for Chris McCausland than the carrot it’s currently dangling, which might have seemed like an honour 40 years ago but feels like the biggest insult imaginable in 2024.

They want to give him his own BBC comedy show, the ungrateful bastards.

DREAM crusher of the year 2024?

 Legends Of Comedy host Lenny Henry: “If I ever do stand-up comedy again, I want to make it more . . .”

Funny?

“Honest.”

Oh.

Fred’s a trip hazard

SENDING Gino D’Acampo and Fred Sirieix off on a road trip without Gordon Ramsay is a bit like reforming Tight Fit without hiring Steve Grant to dress up as Tarzan and sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

Beyond pointless.

It could get worse as well. If Gino’s cancelled for the very modern crime of “thrusting his crotch”, ITV will be left with just Fred, the glorified waiter off First Dates, patronising the rest of the planet.

In the meantime, we had a two-part project that’ll be fighting it out with Gary Barlow’s Wine Tour of South Africa for the worst celebrity travelogue of 2024.

It was called Gino And Fred: Emission Impossible, and involved the gobby Italian burglar boozing and leering his way across Austria and Croatia, while the freeloading Frenchman lectured us about the environment, stuck his nose up at all those other people who’d actually paid to be there and said: “Our journey through Croatia has shown us the potential threat the tourist hordes pose to this incredible country.”

Those “hordes,” of course, pay Fred’s wages, but, like all the world’s most deluded bell-ends, he tried to set himself apart from the proles by claiming he’s “a traveller, not a tourist”.

If he also carried a mental image of drunken sex pests with a criminal record, causing havoc abroad, then the irony was lost on me until they turned up at a Croatian restaurant, where the owner stored his wine at the bottom of the local lagoon and Fred asked: “You don’t have a problem? Nobody’s going to steal the wine?”

No. Well. Not until Gino turned up, anyway.

GOGGLEBOX. Giles, watching You Bet: “It’s nice to see Holly back, isn’t it, Mary?”

“Not really.”

And on that bombshell, it feels like the right time to wish you all a very happy Christmas.

Unexpected morons in the bagging area

TIPPING POINT: Lucky Stars, Ben Shephard: “ ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey’ is a line from which BBC police drama series starring Martin Compston?”

Keith Duffy: “The Bill.”

Ben Shephard: “In England, in the period before taking any motorcycle or moped test, a rider must display a learner plate featuring which letter?”

Olivia Attwood: “P.”

And Impossible: “Which World War I poet died in action in 1918 just a week before the Armistice was signed?”

Jess, Emma and Connor who, given the options of A) Siegfried Sassoon and C)Wilfred Owen, chose B): “John Cooper Clarke.”

Random irritations

BBC1’s Sports Personality Of The Year cowards wallowing in the illusion of female friendliness while ducking all mention of the XY chromosomes who were beating up women at the Olympic boxing.

The Day Of The Jackal taking ten episodes to kill Lashana “Bianca” Lynch when her acting should’ve got her shot in the opening five minutes. And Harry and Meghan’s Netflix Polo series, which is so lethally boring it could comatose a pod of caffeinated dolphins before the opening ­credits have finished. Man, it’s dull.

Great sporting insights

LEON OSMAN: “By dropping Rashford, Ruben Amorim has drawn a foot in the sand.”

Stephen Warnock: “When Fernandes equalised it was the winner.” And Theo Walcott: “Palmer does this time and time again. He’s so unpredictable.”

 (Compiled by Graham Wray)

WATCH as much telly as you like over the next fortnight, none of it will be so bad it’s as brilliant as The Good Ship Murder’s Christmas special, where Minty from EastEnders was impaled on a Christmas tree while dressed as Santa Claus and Channel 5’s singing detective Shayne “Jack Grayling” Ward attempted to bribe a Croatian comedy club owner by saying he’d “sing for free next time we dock in Dubrovnik”, if he handed over the incriminating CCTV footage.

And if he didn’t? He’d sing the whole of his Breathless album.

OVER ten hours into Day Of The Jackal, Eddie Redmayne: “Don’t worry, this will all be over very soon.”

NOT.

 SOON. ENOUGH.

TV Gold

CHRIS McCAUSLAND becoming the most welcome winner of Strictly since Bill Bailey.

Michael McIntyre’s story about ordering from the wrong menu at a Beverly Hills hotel on his brilliant BBC1 25th Year Stand-Up Special.

The U&Drama channel re-running all nine series of the Beeb’s old Sunday night masterpiece Bergerac.

Doctor Mark Prince’s inspiring acceptance speech, receiving SPOTY’s Helen Rollason Award.

And Sky Documentaries’ wonderfully affectionate and knowledgeable film dedicated to the much-maligned art of Yacht Rock, as showcased by Kenny Loggins and The Doobie Brothers.

 Although it has to be acknowledged, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen did not see it that way and told the producer to “Go f*** yourself”, right at the end.

Lookalike of the week

THIS week’s winner is comedy legend Larry David and Geri from Pixar’s Geri’s Game.

•  Emailed in by Connor David.