It simply doesn’t matter who wins Strictly

If there’s one thing I cannot stand it’s people taking themselves too seriously. And for that very reason I cannot stand the craze that is Strictly Come Dancing. It’s just so unbelievably smug and engenders in its fans the same kind of irritating smugness which makes my blood boil. Let’s be real for a moment – it’s a show in which semi-celebrities dance in front of four ‘judges’ and are slowly eliminated until one is crowned the winner. The celebrities are not dancing to try and win a dancing contract. They’re paid to appear and mostly do so to revive their careers by entertaining the licence-paying public. I’m pretty sure that Darren Gough did not secretly harbour desires as a teenager to be a ballroom dancer, but all the cricket got in the way and that Rachel Stevens wasn’t devastated that her frantic popstar life meant she couldn’t pursue her real ambition to dance the Argentinean Tango in front of Len Goodman. It just does not matter who wins. Just as it doesn’t matter who wins I’m a Celebrity or Celebrity Big Brother. All that matters is that the viewer is entertained and keeps watching and voting.

Already I will have split my readers. True Strictly fans will be balking at my suggestion that Strictly has greater purpose than to entertain because to you Strictly means more than entertainment – it’s dancing and it matters a great deal.

I really do want to be in the club. I want to believe in the greater purpose of dancing, but the problem is that I simply do not. I might think one celebrity looks nicer in sequins than another, but that’s as far as I can stretch it. And it seems that to be part of the Strictly club you have to care; you have to be offended at the idea that it doesn’t actually matter who wins the show.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that the format isn’t a good and fun idea for a TV show nor something that I couldn’t quite happily eat my chips in front of on a Saturday night, but the problem is that Strictly and its fans think that it is more than this. This is not just a TV show. No, this is serious stuff. This is dancing.

And it was John-Sergeant-gate which showed up the Strictly club for what it was. Here was a political commentator who couldn’t dance, but who was undoubtedly entertaining the nation. Was the Strictly machine happy that the show was being talked about and written about more than ever? Were they happy that more people were tuning in to be entertained by Sergeant’s dancing – no, they were outraged. The judges could not keep the acidity out of their comments and Strictly fans up and down the country were saying that people who voted for him, like me, were ruining the show.

Ruining the show? I was being entertained by Sergeant and wanted to continue to be entertained by him – a premise upon which I assumed the show worked. But alas no, I was wrong. This was about dancing. And because Sergeant couldn’t actually dance he had to go. ‘You wouldn’t vote for a crap singer on the X Factor would you Alice?’ Well, I might do if they were fun enough, but that’s not the point. The X Factor’s premise is trying to find the next big popstar. Strictly is not trying to find the next big dancer. It’s entertainment with the by-product of reviving flagging (non-dancing) careers and making money.

Strictly is meant to be entertaining – whether or not you, or the judges, like it it has no greater purpose than that. Those hideously smug judges and their equally smug fans are ruining it for the rest of us. I, for one, will be keeping my television firmly off until they chill out a bit and stop taking the whole thing so seriously.