Strictlywatch 2009: Week 1 Part 2

Watching Strictly Come Dancing last night reminded me why it love it so much. Not like, enjoy, think is fun, but proper heart does a leap when the music starts love it. There are all the obvious reasons, music / dance / spangly dresses. But there's something less tangible too. Bear with me here, I'm about to get pretentious. It's the ritual of it. The way every detail has been carefully planned and is repeated week after week after week, to a quite astonishing level of repetition that goes beyond mere catchphrases to whole sections of the script being repeated word for word (welcoming the orchestra, telling the couples after the dance-off that they can "do no more"), and the choice of camera shots being exactly the same (the sweep along the couples when they first come on, the link Tess does from the balcony before the dance-off.) It's so comforting. Comforting yet shiny. It's like Christmas, once a week. No matter what else has been going on in my life, I can switch on Strictly Come Dancing and know exactly what I'm going to get.

The professional dancers are a huge part of this. The celebrities change every year but the pro dancers stay the same, and long term addicts like me can really get to know them, not just their personalities but their dancing styles, so I can tell you that Flavia Cacace is the most stunning, dramatic dancer of the women, and Lilia Kopylova the most appealing with the sexiest bum. With last year's new arrival Kristina, they are my favourite female dancers, which is why it was a dis-as-ter, as Craig would say, to see them both in the bottom two this week. In particular I burned for Lilia - out in the first week with Richard Dunwoody - who has not been given a decent dance partner since she was runner up with Matt Dawson in 2006. There was no way of telling in advance that Flavia's partner Craig Kelly was a bit of a stick, but Lilia deserved better after being paired with Don Warrington last year and Dominic Littlewood the year before. It's interesting to note that her husband and dance partner Darren has also got an obvious lemon (Lynda Bellingham) and I wonder if there is a behind-the-scenes reason for them both being flagged to go out early. (Amusingly, if you go to Flavia's website vincentandflavia.com her comment on Craig is "Flavia's celebrity, Craig Kelly is the right age, and Flavia says she was very pleased when she saw him for the first time." Quite.)

Anyway. Are you exhausted already? I'll do the dances.

1. Phil and Katya dancing a cha cha. Comedy gold to match their gold outfits, and as Bruce said (wisely, for once) they'll get away with murder in this competition. Tuffers's dancing is a bit half-arsed but, with his charm, nobody will give a toss for weeks.

2. Craig and Flavia dancing the rumba. In my notes (yes, people, I was taking notes), I have written "I love Flavia, even in that orange dress, which is the exact colour of my free pen from radtac.co.uk." I didn't much love Craig's rumba, but please note: I HATE the rumba, and so my responses today are going to be completely up the spout. Craig came across as quite grumpy - nerves and despair, I think, combined with Mancunian surliness - and I wasn't surprised to see him in the bottom two.

3. Laila and Anton, dancing the cha cha. Horrifyingly, my TV died at the exact moment this dance started, and I missed most of the dance before it revived, but judging by what I saw, the dance pretty much died as well. Bruno made the best comment of the night - "what a waste of that magnificent equipment"!

4. Zoe and James dancing a rumba. Love Zoe, "love" the tail feathers in her outfit (according to It Takes Two, this was a "Grace Kelly" look, rather than - as it seemed to my eye - inspired by wild west saloon bar prostitutes), love her acting the dance, hated the dance.

5. Jo and Brendan dancing a rumba. My scientific research (comments from people I follow on Twitter) suggests that everybody hated this and can't understand how Jo stayed in. In fact this was the only rumba I liked. Perhaps it's the wholesale destruction of the rumba form that appealed to me.

6. Richard and Lilia dancing a cha cha. Richard may be sweet with a lovely smile but he can't dance for toffee and both he and Lilia know it. As a result, this dance mainly consisted of Richard grinning and waving his arms around while Lilia worked her ass off in a costume made of a small amount of leftover tinsel. How Len thought that this was more deserving to stay in than Craig's tango I will never know. In my notes I have written: "Len is nuts". (Nuts and, seasoned Strictly watchers will know, absurdly biased towards sportsmen.)

7. Ricky and Natalie dancing a rumba. Are these two shagging? It certainly looks that way. It was a rumba, so I hated it, and Natalie dances like a stripper which is completely disconcerting, and I have written in my notes "WTF is that pink thing on her dress?" But Ricky is, undeniably, very good, and I look forward to seeing him do a dance I actually like. Also, Alesha referred to his "journey", the first mention of that Strictly cliche this series, hurrah! Alesha is also busy developing her own cliche, giving praise and then saying "I commend you for that", which should be added to the list for the SCD drinking game.

8. Natalie and Vincent dancing a cha cha. Natalie did great dancing faces (this may be the year of the dancing faces) and I love her attitude, but I found this dance oddly underwhelming, for reasons I can't put my finger on.

So a somewhat limp ending to the dances, but fortunately there were some pro dances to liven things up again before the dance-off, including a brilliant quickstep, choreographed by (pro) Natalie. As I have mentioned, Natalie dances like a stripper, and I did wonder how she'd manage to dance like a stripper in a quickstep. Turned out it was in choosing the Marylin Monroe version of "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" in which she gets to mouth the spoken words "My name is Lolita and I'm not supposed to play with boys". Nothing says classic quickstep like an allusion to a novel about paedophile rape. To be fair, the choreography was great.

Then all that was needed was a guest turn from the singing hobbit (Jamie Cullum) and the Dreaded Dance Off before Strictly was over for another week. So until next time... keep dancing!

Full programme and clips here.