Strictlywatch 2009: Week 8

And now! Live! Live!! LIVE!!! from BLACKPOOL!!!! It's the Strictly Come Dancing Kicking Out Craig Special!!!!!

OK, so when did the Blackpool episode become all about Craig? Why was I not invited to that meeting? I'm pretty sure I was free. I realise that Craig is FROM BLACKPOOL, in case anybody missed that, but I'm from London, and I'm pretty sure that if (if? what am I saying? when) I am on Strictly, I would get pretty short shrift if I went around saying "The thing is I'm FROM LONDON, I need to stay IN LONDON, I'm the LOCAL GIRL and so you've got to KEEP ME IN THE COMPETITION UNTIL LONDON BY WHICH I MEAN THE ENTIRE COMPETITION BECAUSE IT'S HELD IN LONDON SO I HAVE TO BE HERE FOR THE FINAL, AND I CAN'T LOSE ON HOME TURF BECAUSE I'M THE LOCAL GIRL SO BASICALLY I HAVE TO WIN THE WHOLE OF STRICTLY COME DANCING BECAUSE I AM FROM LONDON" - well, I might try it. But I don't think it'd work.

On the positive side, at least it meant that we all knew that having managed to get Craig as far North as the competition would plausibly allow, we could all jump in the minibus back down the M60 and pretend we didn't notice that he was still in the service station buying mints. Yeah, Craig: you went home and you stayed home. You danced last; you were last on the traditional VT where everyone has to say "I am having the most amazing time and I can't let my partner down"; you were last on the leaderboard (and a bonus, please, whoever did the maths and gave you a Cha Cha Cha this week which was bound to be the worst dance you could possibly do); you were going down. Even you knew it, judging by your surprise when Tess said "And you don't want to be watching from home on the sofa next week, do you Craig?" Craig's mouth said "No, of course not", but his face said "er, Tess, didn't you get the memo? I'm getting knocked out this week. The whole country knows. Flavia's booked a holiday."

Anyway, there were other copples, so let's get reviewing shall we?

1. Ricky and Natalie, tango. I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU THEY WERE SHAGGING! WOULD ANYBODY LISTEN TO ME? NO, YOU NEVER DO! WELL MAYBE SOMETIMES YOU DO. BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY SHAGGING, IT WAS ON THE VT AND EVERYTHING AND THE DAILY MAIL SAYS THAT HE'S BROKEN UP WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND, NOT THAT I READ THE DAILY MAIL, BUT I CAN'T HELP WHAT GOOGLE GIVES ME, and that might explain why Ricky looked like he wanted to vomit just before he went on for his tango. Not the Daily Mail, and not because shagging Natalie would make you puke, far from it, but he'd clearly been up all night in a seedy Blackpool B&B with Natalie, doing the horizontal tango, and probably had to stop horizontal tangoing at intervals to take calls from his angry ex-girlfriend, who wants that, not me, well maybe the shagging part, but not the ex bit, and then around four in the morning he remembered that he was first on the dancefloor, and even though Craig was going out this week so everybody else got a bye, it is twice the size of the dancefloor at home, with better lighting and more people in the audience, and he was on first, he had already thought of that but there is was, undeniable, and he had knackered himself with shagging, and this was not a good dance-friendly strategy, and he had about three hours before he had to be in make-up. Oh dear, Ricky. Still, great tango. Not worth making yourself sick over.

2. Natalie and Vincent, quickstep. Kind of mean putting her on after Ricky and Natalie. She bounced around the stage like a hot cocktail sausage in a mouth.

3. Jade and Ian, jive. Another meeting I wasn't at: the one where they gave Jade a jive outfit that looked like a hanky dipped in lime TicTacs and then wrapped around a very small pair of pants. Anyway, for all that we've been hearing all week about Jade's jive being excellent and how amazingly she dances it FOR A TALL PERSON (drink!) it was... good. But nothing special.

4. Ali and Brian, Viennese Waltz. I knew immediately that this was going to get four 10s. Not because it was all that wonderful, but because I always find waltzes and Viennese waltzes tedious beyond belief, and the more tedious I find them, the higher they score, and this was a total snore-fest. 40 out of 40!

5. Ricky and Erin, salsa. I cannot recall a thing about this and had to scrutinise the whole of the internet very closely before I remembered that it was even a salsa. Not a good sign. They went into the dance off but can't have been too worried because it was getting rid of Craig week. And Craig went. In Tess's room after the dance, Ricky claimed that "I put the E in entertainment but I don't take the P out of professional", proving that he really should not be allowed to write his own scripts.

6. Laila and Anton, Paso Doble. They dance to 'Layla', personally I think that Craig should have danced to Layla, just to confuse everyone on the way out. Anyway. Actually Laila's Paso Doble was very good, but I am no longer liking Laila. She is whingey. Also, every time I see Anton I want to weep, because I know that year in year out I wait for Bruce Forsythe to die, I mean retire, and when he does, they will replace him with ANTON, which is a bit like taking a break from having diarrhea just in order to start puking.

7. Phil and Katya, rumba. This was the dictionary definition of "not his dance" and a triumph for those of us (everybody alive, surely) who think that the rumba is a fucking ridiculous dance. Essentially, Phil did all the moves very nicely, but looked throughout like he was about to piss himself laughing at any moment. Some people may argue that this is not catching the spirit of the dance; others may feel that it is catching the spirit of the dance to perfection. You, as they say, decide. Incidentally, my crush on Phil is extending to Katya, and every time they show training footage of them I spend a lot of time looking wistfully at her practice outfits and wondering if I could conceivably go about my business of being a full-time author whilst wearing a uniform of hotpants, legwarmers and stiletto heels.

8. Chris and Ola, foxtrot. Oh my god. It's good. He can actually dance. Well, this is going to screw everything up. (Stomps off to redraw her Strictly wallchart.)

9. Craig and Flavia, cha cha cha. JUST LEAVE. LEAVE NOW. DON'T EVEN DO THE DANCE. Oh, OK, if you insist. It's horrible, as you might expect, but even I am shocked when Alesha says "I can't believe Zoe's gone and I had to endure *that*". Alesha is very good at nice, but her nasty makes me feel frightened and slightly ill. Just before leaving the dancefloor, Craig does an extra bow, as befits someone who knows they are about to get knocked out, but he has clearly mistaken himself for a John Sergeant style loveable goof type, whereas his dancing is just rather unpleasant.

Do you notice what they did there? They had Craig going on last. Does that tell you, something, Craig? DOES IT?

Then the stuff they have to do to fill the time before the end. I had high hopes for this, seeing as it's BLACKPOOL, BLACKPOOL BABY, and even though I don't know why I am supposed to be excited by BLACKPOOL I have been told to get excited often enough and now I am kind of excited, despite having been to BLACKPOOL and knowing full well there is precious little to get excited about unless you have a thing about chips, drag queens or rain.

So WOO! WOO! LET'S GET IT STARTED! WITH! Oh, a group Viennese Waltz from the pros. Yawn.

Moving swiftly on, the next group dance is a swing dance. YES! That's BETTER! Because it's that day before Remembrence Sunday, the Strictly dancers go to some barracks and dance with soldiers, and I am ready to be bored and sneery but that's because I haven't seen the soldiers yet. As it turns out I have a latent fantasy about going to a barracks with lots of soldiers, where I am wearing a small skimpy outfit with lots of sequins on it, and I dance jive with the soldiers, and then they do things like lift me horizontally across lots of soldiers, and I kind of like it, and they can totally do this again even if it isn't the most appropriate way of marking the death of millions in the Second World War.

The group jive itself is quite fun at first, particularly notable for featuring former champion, the divine Jill "queen of the jive" Halfpenny, who is beautiful and dances as well as the pros in the opening sequence, and I am all happy and enjoying it, and then BRUCE COMES OUT ONTO THE STAGE AND STARTS SINGING AND DANCING.

NO. NO. NO. WHY DOES NOBODY CONSULT ME, EVER? THIS IS AN EPIC NO. The only thing that can be worse than this is a few years down the line when ANTON will be singing and dancing, and the very thought of this puts me in an even WORSE mood. Meanwhile the divine Jill Halfpenny is still on stage and I can't see her because the camera is on Bruce doing some kind of unspeakable soft shoe shuffle. NO.

After Bruce, 81, and hot on the heels of last week's BeeGees (Robin, 60, and Barry, 63) comes Rod Stewart, 64. Another meeting nobody invited me to, clearly. I know I'm being ageist but does Stricty have to be retirement home for people who were mostly famous before I - a woman in my thirties ie actually middle aged - was born? I'm quite intrigued as to whether it was the Strictly producers or Rod himself who decided that his singing absolutely had to be accompanied by his wife and Strictly also-ran, Penny Lancaster Stewart, doing a lengthy and not very good show-dance, demonstrating exactly why it is that we, the Strictly audience, are very nostalgic about Jill Halfpenny and not at all nostalgic about Penny Lancaster Stewart.

And then it's all over. Guess who goes home this week! Guess! Go on, guess! Read back over the blog, there are clues.

Watch it all, or just bits thereof, here.

Firestation Bookswap: November Preview

Over on his brilliant blog, Robert Hudson does a lovely job of publicising next month's Firestation Bookswap, in which he is appearing with Richard Asplin. I think it's going to be a particularly good one this month, if you can make it, which is not to diss the particularly good ones we've had so far, but it's too late for you to make those. Also, audience members have started baking and bringing cakes. Rumour has it there is going to be parkin, there will almost certainly be cupcakes and I am hoping for a repeat of last month's flapjacks. (Those links all take you to the bakers thereof.) That's in addition to cakes from varied family members of Scott's, and I might even get some brownies made myself this time. I aint promising anything. But you never know.

Oh yeah, and books. Bring one, swap one, talk about lots. You know the drill.

Tickets here.

Strictlywatch 2009: Weeks 6 and 7

Oh my god! OH MY GOD! I can't believe I managed to stay spoiler-free! From the comments I thought the big news was the tiff over Ricky and Erin's dance, and something about Jade's eyebrows! ALI AND ZOE! ALI AND ZOE! WT MUTHA-F-ING F???

Although, to be scrupulously honest, at the end of the dances I couldn't even remember what Ali and Brian's dance had been, and her foot bruising appeared to have extended as far as her eye makeup, and I hated Zoe and James's samba, and she was dressed as an ice-dancing cocktail waitress at the Rainforest Cafe, so that may explain it, but still, people: CHRIS. LAILA. CRAIG, FFS. Why can't I make the capital letters bigger on this thing? CRAIG!!!!! WHO IS VOTING FOR THESE PEOPLE?

I can't really bring myself to summarise the rest of it. I can't even remember the rest of it. Jo was terrible in the first one and kept falling over, so her departure was what we in the trade would call THE CORRECT DECISION, and Ricky W's foxtrot in the second was one of the all time great Strictly dances (though seriously, a point off from Craig RH because he doesn't like his toes? Pull yourself together, man), and I am still in love with Phil Tufnell and concur with Katya that he is sexier than Antonio Banderas, and I do wonder if the bearded BeeGee is regretting his decision in the 1970s to sing falsetto because it didn't sound great then and now it sounds like he is being strangled, although not as bad as Dave Arch, his Fabulous Singers and his Wonderful Orchestra mutilating Ever Fallen In Love as if the song had shat on their mother's bed and they were out for revenge, and I was disappointed that the pro-dance stripper dance didn't feature Natalie, though Aliona does a great job of dancing like a really scary stripper, and did I mention I watched Flashdance on DVD in Dorset, a film which makes being a stripper look like really good fun, and we're veering off the point now, but ALI AND ZOE, PEOPLE. ALI AND ZOE. I go away for FIVE MINUTES and look what a mess you make of things! CAN WE GET A BIT OF HEAVY ORCHESTRATION GOING HERE PLEASE?

Mumble mumble watch again on website mumble mumble.

Strictlywatch Interruptus

No Strictlywatch this week either. This is the price you pay for me going away for ten days to a cottage with very dodgy (read: largely non-existent) television reception and finishing my novel. I will leave it up to you whether you think it was worth it.

(If you're very lucky there will be a double Strictlywatch Special halfway through the coming week. If you're not quite so lucky I'll just watch the dances, fast-forward through the links, and come out four hours later dazed and confused and covered in sequins and be unable to voice my feelings through the haze. If you're not lucky at all, my PVR won't have recorded any of it, and I'll be reduced to watching Jedward on Youtube instead. I wouldn't rule the last of these out either way.)

I Am Robbie Williams (Sort Of)

I finished my first draft today. (Subject to minor corrections before I send it to my agent.) I want to be honest here about what finishing was like because I didn't feel how I think I was supposed to feel.

In short: it was horrible. I was panicking so much as I typed the last chapter that I had to keep running out of the room. My hands were shaking so much I could barely get the words "The End" onto the screen before I slammed my laptop shut. I then spent the next hour as a total wreck and was only able finally to calm down by sitting with a pencil and paper and writing things down like "I am capable of trying to imagine that I can believe that it is OK if I write a bad book and it doesn't make me a bad person." (I do see the funny side of this.) 10 out of 10 for reading comprehension if you've realised that the above convoluted piece of therapy-speak means that, right now, I don't believe that it's OK if I write a bad book, and do I think it makes me a bad person.

Weirdly, I keep thinking about Robbie Williams's recent bizarre appearance on X Factor. I think that Robbie Williams and I have a lot in common. He's obviously a huge attention-seeker as well as an artist (of sorts) who is passionate about his work, but equally he's crippled with an overwhelming fear of failure and public humiliation and he's unable to control his anxiety.

Me too, me too, me too. I am the Robbie Williams of books, and I haven't even had people heap scorn upon my "Rudebox" yet.

I don't remember finishing the first draft of Gods Behaving Badly being this bad. I think I was excited and proud of myself just for getting to the end. I had no idea if it was any good or not, I didn't have particularly high expectations for it, there was no reason to imagine it would ever be published or read by more than a handful of people.

This time, I still don't know if it's any good or not, but I have a very high expectation of my book being published, and of it being read by thousands - maybe tens of thousands - and, if GBB is anything to go by, hundreds of thousands of people. There's a series of bigger and bigger hurdles in front of me and I could fall at any one. First my agent. Then the publishers of GBB. Then my friends and family. Then the reviewers. Then the world. It's like a gigantic game of Play Your Cards Right, with Bruce bloody Forsythe hosting, and enjoyment of my book as the stake. Will it be "higher! higher!" or "lower! lower!"? I reckon GBB scored around a Jack. Chances are this one is going to be lower.

I keep telling myself that I can't pin my self-worth onto how well this book is received, and what I should really be proud of is the fact that I was willing to take a risk, the huge risk of writing another book and it not being as good and people not liking it, which is honestly the hugest risk I can think of. But the truth is I haven't just pinned my self-worth onto this book, I have superglued it on, and if I need to learn the lesson, with this book, or with the book after this one, or the one after that, that it's just a book and what matters is the endeavour and there is no shame in failure and no matter what happens I am still a worthwhile human being - well, I think it's fair to say that I'm going to be learning the hard way.

And this was just the first draft. God knows what happens once I try to actually make it good.

A Short Blog About Writing

Since Sunday night I have been by myself in a cottage in Dorset. It's my favourite place to write. It's perfect because it's so beautiful, peaceful and quiet, and because there's absolutely nothing else to do. That's an exaggeration, of course. Today I read some of the weekend papers, and went on a walk to the sea, and spent a full hour and a half lying on the sofa watching the light change outside the window. Tonight I might read a book or watch a DVD or both. But there's no mobile phone reception; only dial-up internet, which means I can't access most websites without waiting for hours; and nobody I know within miles. I have already written more in the last two days than I usually manage in a week.

I don't talk much about my writing on this blog. It's something I'm quite sheepish about. As a successful author, I feel like I should really be better at it. Authors I follow on Twitter publish daily word counts I can only dream about. Meanwhile most of what I write ends up in the bin. People keep asking me how the new book is coming and what it's about, and I get coy and don't answer, and they probably think it's because I am protective of my great idea, when actually it's because I am on my fifth attempt at a new novel since publishing Gods Behaving Badly. I don't know if and when this one might founder on the rocks too.

I do know that I am very close to the end of my first draft. This is further than I have got with anything since GBB. In writing terms, or in my writing terms, this may not be as big a deal as it sounds. If it were a journey, the first draft is just deciding on the destination and buying a map. I still have to bloody get there, but at least I know where I'm going.

I'm scared. I'm slightly in shock that I might be on the brink of actually managing this again, a second novel. I don't know if it's any good. I am contemplating new careers where I don't have to put my soul on the line every damn time. But I'm not about to stop now.

In Dorset it's cold and dark and I can't get channel 5. What's it like where you are?

Strictlywatch Is Away

No Strictlywatch this week I'm afraid - I'm driving to Dorset for a week tomorrow and I don't have time to watch it before I go. Dorset, long-term readers will know, is the land of DARK and COLD where much of Gods Behaving Badly got written, and I'm hoping for similar results on Untitled Project 2. Dorset is also the land of no broadband. Yes, people, if there is blogging it will be on dial-up. So slow I may as well come round your houses individually and write my blog straight onto your computer screens. Strictlywatch will be back next week. Until then... Keeeeeep dancing!