Popstar to Opera star

Well, how could I not? I've sung chorus bits in three opera now (yes, three!), which makes me as qualified as...um...Alan Titchmarsh.

Yep, Alan Titchmarsh is co-hosting this ITV1 venture into high culture with Myleene Klass, popera poppet Katherine Jenkins, a tenor with curly hair called Rollando, Meatloaf and...um...Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen, who gets into the judging panel because he's a bit Welsh and...umm flamboyant.

First up is Jimmy "one take" Osmond. He gets "O Sole Mio" (Just One Cornetto, peasants), and does quite a nice job. I've nearly forgiven him for Long Haired Lover from Liverpool....

We missed no. 2 because the Ocado order came in, but Kym Marsh's Faure was pretty good (was it Faure? Not sure). The audience are very encouraging and lovely. This is difficult stuff, after all. Kym and Myleene manage to be fairly civil, though Kym never ever looks Myleene in the eye.


Alex James is our John Sargent: flat, weird and floppy haired. A cheesemaking ex-Blur bassplayer who says: "There are punchers and strokers. I'm a puncher". He punches his way flatly through a famous bit of Rossini with more chutzpah than Harry Redknapp's accountant and charms the socks off the judges. Meatloaf pronounces it best opera performance by a rock bass player this evening. Errm. OK

Now, three years ago, I was stuck in a tent in Hyde Park with Marcella Detroit warbling at me for . Then I had to walk around London in my bra in the middle of the night. For Charity. I raised £500 but still Marcella Detroit has a lot to answer for. She weeps and strops her way through rehearsals, while the rest of the world admires her severe bob. Her performance is...OK. Good pitching, but no control over her voice, and very little emotion, but pretty good for only a week's intensive training. The judges love her. I'm not so sure. But then I am biased.

The McFly is the rather useful guitar boy, Danny, singing La Donna e Mobile. Not very well. He's nervous, and his voice is a bit weak, but he does the long notes rather well so maybe it's a confidence issue. Meatloaf jumps out and waves his hands around theatrically.

Next up is a Saturday called Vanessa who has a rather sweet voice, but is breathy and a bit static in the dyamic dept.

Darius has to sing "Nessun Dorma", but he's got a nice baritone voice. Bit thin, but he's very sweet and he has good focus. Meatloaf waves his arms around and says "dude" a lot.

Last up is Bernie Nolan, who spent most of the 70s in Spandex being in the mood for dancing. She sings the famous one from Tales of Hoffman, and does OK. She hits the notes, and actually gets some emotion in, and stays in time (most of the time).

Wish they'd all stop doing operatic gestures, like waving arms around during the big note.

The Big Vote is tomorrow, but I'm not sure if this show will last that long. I mean, they've done lots of the Big Arias this week. How many weeks before we hit the Harrison Birtwhistle? Do you really want to hear Darius sing Peter Grimes?

BBCFour and why I love it

Now I would continue reviewing Le restaurant but there doesn't seem to be much point now that my favourites have been dumped and those shark-eyed winking no-hopers James and JJ have survived thanks to their ruthlessly competent and increasingly contemptuous sous chef. This year's crop have been the most hopeless yet, and I can't see Raymond Blanc risking his sanity and reputation for another run next year.

So I'm going to warble the praises of BBC4 instead. It's great. In fact, I'd like the BBC board to divide my licence fee equally between BBC4 and Radios 4 and 5live. Someone else can pay for Eastenders.

This week's offerings have been a fascinating history of Russian art -in which I discovered that Peter the Great had stayed in Deptford, a French murder mystery and the utterly magnificent Wallander.

The French murder mystery is called 'The Poisoner' and tells the apparently true story of a middle aged woman torn apart by jealousy and village gossip. It's beautifully filmed in harsh grey and leached colour for the village scenes: and warm browns and reds for the Parisien scenes. Marie is a country widow who refuses the advances of her neighbour. Neighbour and best friend (who also slept with her late husband) conspire to spread the story that Marie poisoned her husband so that she could run off with her German lodger - this all takes place in 1947, so feelings about Germans run a little wild. Marie is arrested and the weasly investigating officer ain't no Morse. At the end of the first episode, she's about to go to trial, having been tricked into a confession by ber cellmate (working for M N'est-pas Morse). A campaigning young journalist has taken up her cause and she has a cute lawyer, so things may be looking up (for the journo and the lawyer anyway)

Watching Wallander in Swedish is hard work. You can't help but see names from the IKEA catalogue all over the place. So they'll talk about a murder in Malmo and you'll wonder what if it was a problem with the assembly instructions. And blood! Everywhere! Not to mention scenery, snow, wind and a lead character who always appears to be on the brink of a breakdown, aided by his equally glum daughter and her on-off boyfriend. Wallander takes us on a tour of Sweden's darker side, and we discover that it's just like home, only colder.

LE RESTAURANT: OPENING FRIGHT

For another week, the good people of Bristol are accosted by strange men (and the occasional woman) bearing trays of food. Raymond summons the couples on board a big boat and places a bunch of keys on a barrel top. It's a bit like a swingers' party, only with restaurants. Raymond sends them un petit amuse bouche to inspaire them to create somezing that demonstrates the essence of their vision and then give it away to the people.

Team Winker nab a rather posh venue with a big terrace and high five each other annoyingly. JJ appears to have been traumatised by last week's debacle, and refuses to do any actual cooking, apart from squeezing vaguely at a scotch egg. The boys manage to chat up a lot of blondes and do lots of annoying high fives. Even the waiters are high fived as they lay the tables, poor chaps. JJ cowers at the pass while other chefs assemble sausage rolls with salad and stuff for the "indoor picnic" concept. Raymond turns up at a full restaurant, which is nice. Except that it's full of very hungry people who have been waiting for over an hour for their scotch eggs, and only two waiters. James claims that everything is absolutely fine, and that everybody's happy. No really they are....absolutely. While Raymond interviews dozens of hungry, pissed-off people James runs upstairs and sobs into his spangly ABC jacket.

Team NotGay get a nice little place in a pleasant district and do a fairly good job at selling their restaurant to the public. Nathan screws up the service on the first night, and there are the usual scenes with annoyed diners getting their coats after waiting for two hours, but they like the food, even if they replaced haddock with cod.

Team Blonde get what looks like an old chippy with an non-working oven, which puts the dampeners on their amuse bouche of goats cheese parcels in filo pastry. The goats cheese is from France, and god only knows where the bread came from, but they still market their local food for local people concept with goats cheese on toast. That's cold goats cheese on cold toast. With a nipple of squished chutney. Somehow they get a full restaurant on the first night, but then Blonde number 2 forgets to cook anything. This isn't a good move. After all, people don't usually go into a restaurant to sit on uncomfortable chairs and chat. You go to pubs for that.

Team Nigeria offer suya to the masses. Lucky masses - though kosai (sp? - spicy little deep-fried puffs made of bean paste) would have been even nicer. The ladies get a restaurant in downtown Bristol and hire some African dancers to entertain the masses. Sarah still worries about their cooking (she's not into chewy goat), but says they know how to make a girl feel welcome.

I think Mark may be right about Team Miliband, maybe we should change their name to Bez/Miliband. Badger decides to dress up in a badger costume because its...er...his name. However, badger costumes are hard to find, so he wears half a gorilla suit and paints his head in black and white. They serve half a strawberry smeared with cream and some parma ham and melon for their Modern British cooking concept, but at least it doesn't look like a giant blackhead on toast. Short on customers, Badger visits the local barracks and drums up a few of Our Boys to brave the cameras for an evening. Bez throws himself around the kitchen and worries Raymond with his instabilité and inability to make an edible sauce. The soldiers seem to like it though, and Team Bez/Miliband win restaurant of the week for actually managing to serve most of their customers and not having any walkouts.

Team Essex call their place The Front Room, because they serve food that you could cook at home, I suppose. Mrs Essex frets about people getting bored and walking out, so she hires a magician and a saxaphone player to entertain the punters. Mr Essex sighs and starts sharpening his knives meaningfully. They attract hearty blokes wanting slabs of pure MEAT without any fussy stuff, and even the sax player pockets a tidy sum - though he saw Mrs Essex coming when he told her his charges. Two hundred quid in London would get you a four piece band for two solid hours, and they'd help with the washing up if you offered them food.

Raymond doesn't want this lot of candidates cluttering up his manoir, so they all convene in the winning restaurant to learn their fate. Team Blonde are sacked for being blonde and a bit useless.

Next week: Sarah comes close to shouting at Raymond again, and James from Team Winker snivels behind a door.

RESTAURANT WEEK TWO

RESTAURANT WEEK TWO

WORKIN’ ON A CHAIN GANG

Only seven couples remain to fart for zeir restaurants, while the director struggles to make Bristol look vaguely attractive in the connecting shots (half of which appear to be of Clifton instead). This week our budding restaurateurs have to run high street chain restaurants for a day, so they get to know the meaning of hard work and can have their naïve dreams re the catering industry brutally squashed. They have a day of training and learning the menu, and then are thrown into the deep end the next day.

There is a pan-Asian canteen called Tampopo that I haven’t heard of. The stern manageress says they have to give everyone their main dish within ten minutes. Team NotGay and Team Winker are sent to work there. During their training day, Chris nails the cookery but JJ and his hateful floppy hair struggles to control the wok. The following day, The Notgays seem to have no problems, food comes rattling out five minute after the order, Nathan is calm and efficient, and even Sarah can’t find anything to complain about. Team Winker start off all cocky and “Bring it on, chap!!” but are gratifyingly hopeless. “You’re supposed to take away my menu” Sarah hisses icily, as soon as James leaves with her order. JJ is instantly behind as James takes fifteen orders in the space of a nanosecond. Soon there is an hour wait for dishes (which James consistently lies about, even to Sarah, David and Raymond) and there are lots of shots of JJ panicking, messing up and getting dishes completely wrong while the guy who trained him basically stands around laughing. Stern manageress says it is UNACCEPTABLE. Raymond goes into the kitchen and brusquely orders JJ to clean up his station, not like that! Do it properly! LOLs. James says he did a great job and it is all JJ’s fault. Sarah, who understandably seems to have her hate on for these two, says it is partially James’ fault for not communicating properly. The NotGays were my faves from week one and seem to be the only ones who coped at all this week. Winkers to be fired soon pls thx.

Teams Essex, Blonde and Milliband (Barney looks more like Bez, methinks, esp when he starts panicking and running around in a flop sweat, which I predict will happen every week) are set to work in a Yo Sushi conveyor belt restaurant and have to learn all the names of the different sushi/nigiri/mako shapes etc. Team Essex are all “Eww!! raw fish!!” and Badger says “Ee by gum , we don’t have stuff like this oop north”, having presumably never heard of places like Manchester, Leeds or Newcastle. They just about cope at lunchtime, but baldy Yo Sushi bloke correctly predicts that they will be fucked in the evening when it is actually busy. That night the restaurant is completely rammed and the cooks neglect the conveyor belt, so more people order off the other menu, which means the conveyor belt is neglected even more. Cut to Raymond glaring at a sad solitary edemame bean trudging round the conveyor belt like a drunk asleep on the Circle Line. The regular chef seems to spend the whole evening shaking his head in disgust, and everyone struggles apart from Blonde waitress, who does very well. To be fair, the problem is compounded by the artificial set-up where each waiter can only work with their designated chef. It would have made more sense for two of them to do orders and one to stock the conveyor. There was a nice scene where David talked Mrs Essex into trying some raw fish and finding out it wasn’t too bad. I found David to be a bit of a blank last series, but he seems a lot more relaxed this time and is almost matching Sarah with his hilarious facial expressions. Team Blonde are dark horses at this stage. Team Essex have potential, but I fear that Team Miliband will fall to pieces at the first sign of stress.

Finally, Teams Nigeria and IKEA are despatched to Pizza Express, where a scarily fervent Pizza Express lady explains that the folded menu spines have to be perfectly aligned with the Earth’s magnetic fields or something. A hot chef explains the exact number of pepperoni slices and exact weight of cheese for each dish. At lunch time, the Nigerian ladies (who seem really likeable and are my second favourites after the NotGays) cope Ok while Mrs IKEA soon falls behind, getting her dishes wrong and turning out mutant, vaguely pizza shaped, dough-based hybrid things, while George Best keeps simpering to her about how wonderful she is. Boke. Sarah pretends to have a nut allergy to test their menu knowledge skillz, so George Best, trying to read the menu over her shoulder, promptly recommends her two nut-crammed death pizzas. One of the judges tells us that making pizzas from instructions in a glossy ring binder is not exactly hard. Cut to Mrs IKEA saying making pizzas from instructions in a glossy ring binder is harder than you think. The evening is a complete disaster. Team IKEA fall behind instantly and Team Nigeria fall behind at a more leisurely pace and end up offering free drinks. Scarily fervent Pizza Express lady is on the verge of tears and is all “what have they done to my beautiful restaurant!?!”. Sarah glares at George Best and says he has to sort this shit out right now. He gives a cringeworthy speech about how they are trying hard but he is just a humble flower seller from London Tahn, or something. The drunken starving customers applaud him, as opposed to pelting him with overcooked doughballs, which is what I would have done. Sarah asks Mrs IKEA how it went and she says it seemed fine and no one complained to her. Well they wouldn’t – they all complained to your husband who apparently spends his whole life trying to bolster your self-esteem. Sarah nods back with a hilarious “Alrighty then, you delusionoid” type expression.

After the restaurants have closed and everyone has stopped shaking, they are taken to a sinister barge to learn their fate. Raymond does his closing speech, saying that some couples coped well (cut to the NotGays) and some couples struggled (cut to everyone else). One couple will NOT get to open their Restaurant and that couple is… Team IKEA - surprise surprise - they really should have gone after the packet salmon debacle last week. George Best says their dream is over. “One of our dreams,” Mrs IKEA says darkly. Back to flower selling for you two, then.

Next week: the couples see their premises for the first time, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. They have to give away free snacks in the street (with Badger dressing up as an actual badger to do so), and one couple of annoying blond blokes WILL be closing their restaurant.

LE RESTAURANT

Eet's baack! Raymond and his sniffy cohorts 'ave anuzzair bunch of 'ow you say...numpties with ambitions to open their own eatery. This week we get to meet the contestants and they get to cook for Raymond and his fearsome assistants. First, they take to the streets of Bristol.

Now, I'm sure that Bristol has a wide range of high end and speciality food shops, but for some reason our contestants are in Morrisons. Or is it Asda? I wouldn't know: I shop at Ocado, darling.

Ho hum...here we go, in the live as-it-happens blog, straight from our lovely new laptop...

Team Nigeria
A midwife and a lady who does the announcements on the Piccadilly line. They want to put Nigerian food on the culinary map because nobody eats Nigerian food (apart from Nigerians and a few Scots mechanics and nurses nostalgic for their VSO days when they drank Gulder beer under the desert sky.). They (or the producers) don't seem to realise that Bristol, being one of the main centres of slavery in the 17th century and all, also has a large African Caribbean community, and thus fail to find a butcher selling goat. They have to make do with mutton for a mutton stew and rice and it looks totally tasty. Raymond and co do much chewing and accuse the girls of "murdairing the lamb". They also don't think it looks very nice. I disagree.

Mother&Son
I haven't got a name for Mother & Son team yet. She's a food stylist: he wears pratty glasses and prattles on about wanting to cook the produce from his allotment. Having been shot down in flames by Raymond and his lieutenants, he retires, tongue-tied.

Team Essex
He's a hospital chef: she's an estate agent with a lovely whiney estate agent voice and they overcook a chocolate pudding. I remember the hospital food my late grandmother got served...

MadMother/Daughter
...want to open a multicultural restaurant that definitely isn't a curry house. The trouble is, they don't actually know how to cook. Raymond has to intervene when they try to open a tin of condensed milk with a very very big knife, and show them how to use a can-opener.

I wanted to keep them in simply for the comedy value. Spoilsport Raymond asks for them to leave immediately.

Team NotGay
The traditional "best friends" Nathan and Chris want to bring high-end food to the mid-priced market. Chris works for a diet boot camp in Wales, and wants to stop cooking beans and mushrooms. His pork Wellington goes completely wrong, and he's reduced to cooking a fillet while Nathan flaps about. It's actually quite nice.

Team Blonde
First seen devising their vision of locally sourced, seasonal food in the corridor, then in the next scene cooking up some frozen peas. Well, that's a good start. Scallops with pea and mint puree isn't the most original of dishes, and Raymond points out they cooked their peas for 25 minutes.

Team Winker
A couple of 80s haircuts called JJ and James. JJ makes cocktails and James runs the bar that JJ works in. Their idea is picnic food in a restaurant setting. Well that was the one that didn't go away when they sobered up. Raymond is perturbed by JJ's habit of winking at him. James looks a bit perturbed at the idea of actually doing anything that doesn't involve sitting at a bar with a glass in his hand. The pear and strawberry crumble is more like a sugary dough with a few bits of fruit underneath. Raymond: pas heureux.

Team Miliband
Barney is an army chef and Badger is ex-logistics. Barney looks a bit like David Miliband. Badger barks orders, and Barney looks harried. He has to consult Raymond about his over-salted stock.

Team IKEA
Apparently Mrs IKEA is married to George Best, and lived in Sweden for a bit in the 80s, so she's going to make gravadlax and beetroot salad. Raymond and co note that all she has done is open some packets of Asda smoked salmon and mix some veg with sour cream.


It turns out that I didn't need a team name for Mother&Son because Raymond decides that for zem, the journey is over.

Next week, they're let loose on an unsuspecting public. Team Winker runs out of scotch eggs or something. George Best says he can't cope, and Team Nigeria is seen offering free drinks to waiting customers.

STRICTLY COME DANCING: FOXTROT TANGO OVER AND OUT

We’re coming to terms with the new format now, and I suppose it makes sense to do it all in one big fat show, just the way it is recorded, than in two shows. For one thing we get fewer silly interludes.

Well, that’s what we thought, then while we were minding our own business, pondering another glass of wine and shifting the cat between laps, we get some middle-aged blokes bouncing onto the stage doing not-very-good tapdancing that wasn’t even in time to the music. And THEN we get Amy Winehouse looking grumpy as she sings backing vocals on some fake-doowop nonsense that even Darts would have thought a bit naff. Amy looked quite healthy, despite the “community service” expression, sang flat, and forgot to wave her arms in time to the music. Her god-daughter had a lovely belter of a voice though – even though her name that nobody remembered anyway has now been changed to “Amy Winehouse’s god-daughter”.

At this point I could digress into musing about Amy Winehouse’s qualifications for godmotherhood (job description: stand witness at baptism ceremony and promise to keep kid on path of righteousness etc…), but to be honest I wish people would leave her alone and let her get on with writing some more lovely songs, so on with the dancing.

BOOBWATCH: we liked Tess’s asymmetric red satin sheath. Suited her.

Brucie did some lame stuff about Twitter (sooo 2008), and then it was straight onto:

TANYA TURNER AND WOLVERINE
OK Producers, enough of the “oooh no, will Tanya Turner be any good this week” nonsense. So what if she stamps on Wolverine’s paws in training? That’s what training is about. Tanya sparkles like an old-fashioned movie star, and delivers a graceful Foxtrot. Lots of walking about and a bit too sedate for my liking, but good.

CHRIS AND OLA
Once again, Ola has raided the handkerchief and haberdashery section in John Lewis for her costume. Chris has to Act Sexy, which is quite painful to behold. He poses self consciously and wriggles his hips a bit. But I’m reminded of John Mills going down with a submarine rather than the sultry streets of Havana.

LYNDA AND DARREN
Lynda’s battle with the costume department has come to an end. And the costume department won. Lynda’s costume theme this series seems to have been “Brothel Madams of Days Gone By”. This week: 1940s Western Brothel Madam. Her foxtrot was very sedate, but NOT ENOUGH. Craig and Alesha voted to save her, but Len saw the agony in her eyes at the thought of another week of looking like a giant salmon with a perm, and said she had to go. I’ve never seen a woman look so relieved.

ALI AND SNAKEHIPS
Bloody good. Not quite a ten, but nearly there.

JO WOOD AND BRENDAN
Brucie makes a lame joke about Jo losing a Stone (geddit). Jo smiles politely. Brendan still hauling the poor old thing around the dancefloor, but she’s getting better

MOOMIN AND CREEPIO
Moomin has worked her Moomin magic on Creepio: he’s now quite sweet and they spend a lot of time giggling and cuddling chastely. Moomin’s salsa is a proper PAR-TAY salsa with lots of jiggling of sequins and tassles flying everywhere. Loved it. Craig wasn’t so sure and earned a Look of Hate from Len.

JOE AND KRISTINA
Oh dear, he’s bringing his comedy dad into rehearsals now. This week there isn’t any belt nonsense, but he still has problems with his timing. The public like him though, and so he clings on for another week.

AMBER AND ANTON
Lots of hugging and kissing and shows of solidarity in the face of hostile media opinion. Yeah, OK we get the message. Laila likes Anton, and he has apologised. We will now move on.

This week’s foxtrot is all glidey loveliness and perfect timing, and earns them a lovely 34. And the great British public decides to keep them in to see if Anton manages to insult another minority grouping next week.

RICKY WHITTLE AND NATALIE
Ricky’s got a big Hollyoaks storyline right now (so that’ll be a big underwear fashion show, male rape, teacher assault or…?), so he’s working really hard, learning lines, doing dancing…doing acting… OK, I’m not a Hollyoaks fan, but he does a lovely little salsa with perfect hips and timing. The judges are slightly disappointed, and tell him he could do better. Ricky: notbothered.

CRAIG AND FLAVIA
Corrie boy is starting to grow on me. He’s got an interesting face, and he’s a bit intense. The foxtrot, however, is notverygood. Poor old Craig looks like he’s about to be shot, and the judges tell him to get a grip. Only Len saves him in the final dance-off, but you can tell he’s on borrowed time. Borrowed time!

TUFFERS AND KATYA
Or, the Battle of Phil’s knee. Lots of hip wiggling and a slightly embarrassing solo turn, and plenty of gurning. Phil is getting lean and mean again, which is nice to see (for me anyway).

JADE AND IAN
I wasn’t sure about the red satin ruffles, but Mr P liked them. They covered a lot of floor, both being tall and all, and there was lots of energy and pizzazz. The ending was some odd thing where Jade did a handstand and pretended to be the Isle of Man flag, and popped out of her dress. Not quite sure which bit was accidental. Judges were very nice about it all, but then gave them rather indifferent points. Ian: tight-lipped.

STRICTLY COME DANCING: ROUND UP

Now, I do have two weeks' worth of notes, but there has been so much going on*, this is going to be a slightly hurried round up of how everybody's doing.

BACK TO THE CHANGING ROOM
Early exits for Richard Dunwoody and Rav Wilding. Dunwoody was very sweet, but looked like he'd rather be digging up Shergar and running him in the Grand National than doing a paso doble. Rav gave it a go, but he was too clunky and a bit bland for the judges and the Great British Public.

So, in alphabetical order

ALI BASTIEN AND SNAKEHIPS FORTUNA
After a lovely waltz in the first week, the Hollyoaks/Bill siren seems to be boringly good and sweet-natured, and she gets on well with Brian's weird eyebrows. Brian still looks like the result of a bizarre gene-splicing experiment between Donny Osmond and John Waters, and his hips are still snakey. Though if we're to believe the tabloids, they're doing more than just dancing...

LYNDA BELLLINGHAM AND DARREN
The first of the oldie-but-hottie ladies suffers from the costume department's concept of what a size 14 lady should wear: whole slabs of sequins and then more sequins, and hair marcel-waved to within a inch of its life. Lynda seems to be the most reluctant dancer of them all. She tries her best, but I'm not convinced that her heart is in it.

JOE CALZAGHE AND KRISTINA AGUILEROVSKA
Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Despite this week's crystal-studded championship belt and a lot of faffing around with Kristina's skirt-that-turns-into-a-cape, this man is DOOMED. It's between Lynda and Joe for who goes next.

MOOMIN AND CREEPIO
Creepio is still putting a brave face on the fact that his latest celeb is neither jailbait nor what one might call a natural dancing shape. But then, that's probably because Moomin is a) Strictly's BIGGEST fan, and b) she ain't half bad. OK, the turquoise fringing during the cha cha was probably a bit much, and we didn't like the duenna look she sported this week, but Moomin has plenty of moxie and chutzpah which might see her through to...oh I dunno...the quarter finals?

ANNOYING GARRY AND ERIN BOAG
Now, you know how it is: the actors who play baddies are often utter sweeties in real life, so it should follow that somebody so annoying in Eastenders would be quite engaging when taken away from his screen wife Minty and the other screechers of Walford. I. Was. Wrong. If he keeps pulling those faces, I may have to invade the dancefloor and slap him myself.

CHRIS HOLLINS AND OLA JORDAN
One of the weirdest combinations of the year. We have Ola in her strange clothing choices, partnered with an early morning sports billy who manages to make a tango look like a jolly good prelude to a lovely evening of playing Risk. He's terribly enthusiastic, and tackles the ballroom dances with great vigour. But then he's oddly sedate in the Latin numbers.

JADE JOHNSON AND IAN WAITE
The judges are unanimous in telling Jade to sort out her shoulders, but she's a nice, tall athletic girl who needs to get a bit of confidence.

CRAIG KELLY AND FLAVIA COMINATCHA
Another weird genetic experiment, this time it's Julian Clary's straight lovechild. Craig's off Corrie, which means I have absolutely no idea who he is. But he seems like a nice boy who can dance a bit. Quarter finals, I think.

ZOE LUCKER AND WOLVERINE
After lots of cunning "oooh she's pretty awful"-type editing and comments from Wolverine in the first week, Tanya Turner (for it is she) turns out to be bloody good at this dancing lark. Even though she giggles uncontrollably when Wolverine tells her to be more sexy.

LAILA ROUASS AND TONY BEAK
Anton's "banter" has got him into a bit of trouble this week (and so it should), and mad Amber from Footba££er$ Wive$ doesn't appear to have gelled with our Tony on the dance floor either. Pity. She's lovely to watch.

PHIL TUFNELL AND KATYA VIRSHILIAS
Whoo! another cricketer! I love Tuffers, but his knees will be the death of him. As will his cheeky chappie charm. The new girl is rather good thoughbut

RICKY WHITTLE AND NATALIE LOWE
Mark's tip for the top is a possible next Lovely Ramps. He's lovely, he's good natured, and he moves like a crawling king snake. He will probably win, and Mark will be a happy man.

JO WOOD AND BRENDAN COLE
Jo is the other glamorous granny, but she readily admits that dancing isn't her thing. She's managed to lean on her rockstar mates to get a couple of half-decent tunes to dance to, but her most amazing achievement is to turn Brendan Cole into a bit of a hero. He's encouraging in rehearsals, and leaps hotly to her defence when Craig Upper-Norwood dares to criticise her fleckles, telling her not to listen " to that idiot from Australia". What is this? We can't have our favourite cockfarmer turning into an alright bloke...

Hopefully, now that the Friday show is no more, and we have the Saturday dance-a-thon instead, normal blogging service will be resumed next week

*(I might be an official Trisha-flicking dolescum these days, but I'm a bloody busy Trisha-flicking dolescum, what with the school run, PTA meetings and house renovations - there's not much room for jobhunting, oh no...).

STRICTLY COME DANCING: SO GOOD THEY HAD TO MUCK AROUND WITH EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE NAME

Autumn's here, and the half-decent tv scheduling has finally kicked off with a new series of Merlin and the TVD team's favourite Saturday night indulgence, Strictly Come Dancing. Woohoo!

Except that if you tuned in on Saturday, you'd have missed half of it already. Because the BBC, in its infinite wisdom, can't help but fuck about with a perfectly respectable format. So now we have...

FRIDAY NIGHT IS BALLROOM NIGHT!!
Yes, that's right. It now starts at 8.30 on a Friday night, when the teenies are tired and fractious after school and couldn't stay awake if you hotwired them to the National Grid. Each celeb now has to learn two dances every week. Friday's dance is a Ballroom number, and the extended Saturday show will be for the Latin dance, several slightly tedious interludes with Brucie's bad jokes and a show dance from the usual suspects. We get to vote on both nights, and then there's a dance-off on Saturday.

NO CAMILLA!
Camilla appears to have decided that sharing a studio with Brendan is not a good thing - well, sharing a universe with Brendan is not exactly a great thing, but poor Camilla has suffered more than most. Maybe she knew that after winning last year's competition, she would have to spend at least five years with a sucession of balding two-left-footed pervs before she got a crack at a decent partner.

We've got two new lady dancers, but more of them later.

ARLENE ON THE ROAD: DARCEY BUSSELL AND ALESHA IN THE HOUSE
The only person who didn't know about Alesha's controversial appointment was my sister-in-law, who spends much of the year in a strict Muslim country with no telly and nothing but a pile of eighteenth century literature for company. Arlene seems to have been sent off around the country searching for dancing talent with Nigel Lythgoe (aka The Man Who Gave Us Myleene Klass). In her place is Former Winner and Goddess no. 3 in Mr P's Pantheon of Goddessness, Alesha Dixon.

Apparently Darcey Bussell (Goddess no. 1 in my dad's Pantheon fwiw) will be joining the judges once they've got rid of all the duffers, so that she doesn't have to ruin her classically trained eyes with clodhoppery.

Alesha did...OK. I mean, I don't think I was the only person in the world who got irritated by Arlene's shoutiness and inept punning. But it would be nice if Alesha didn't bang on about how she knows what the poor slebs are going through, because she felt the same WHEN SHE WON THE SERIES, and got on with some actual judging. Right now it looks like she's been brought in giggle with Bruno.

BOOBWATCH: Motherhood really suits our Tess. She's looking gorgeous in a 1970s Farah kind of way. This week, she's rocking the off-the-shoulder look in pink and purple.


So...the dancers

RAV WILDING AND NEW GIRL Aliona Vilani
Oooh...look at that torso! That's in the Mark Foster league, that is. He's the ex-copper chap off Crimewatch, I believe. Seems nice, if a bit bland. New Girl seems to have played safe and reduced his part to standing still while she drapes herself all over him in an interesting fashion. Len don't like that, and says so. We didn't like her nicking her nan's tablecloth for the rumba either.

ANNOYING GARRY + ERIN (FACE OF) BOAG
Well, his name is really Ricky Groves, but he will always be Annoying Garry to us. He was alright for the waltz and actually had a good pair of feet, but Craig called him a spare part. He tried harder for Saturday's chacha, but "trying harder" seemed to involved making lots of angry goldfish expressions. But it kept them in for another week.

CHRIS HOLLINS AND OLA JORDAN
It's another happy chappy from Breakfast TV. The BBC Breakfast males all seem to be middle-sized men blessed with average good looks and an abundance of perkiness. Chris gets bullied by sports stars for a living, and looks and sounds a lot like my mate Nige. This makes him equally endearing and annoying. He and Ola tango to Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top (we did the pointy finger wave on the sofa). It was good, but you really didn't feel that he was going to drag her off to a seedy hotel for a damn good seeing-to after the dance was over. Len criticises his hands: "Man Hands, not GURL Hands!"

JADE JOHNSON AND LOVELY IAN WAITE
After a bit of "who?" we remembered her from the Olympics. She's definitely an athlete with those shoulders, and seems like a nice girl (Chivalrous Len: "Look at them thighs! You could crack walnuts with them!") She says she's only here for the bling, but turns in a good performance for both dances.

MARTINA HINGIS AND MATTHEW CUTLER
Mr P doesn't think she has aged well, but I think he's just saying that to keep me sweet. She can't stop with the goofy grin. Enough of the smiling, Martina! She was quite graceful, but screwed up a few steps and even Mr P stopped drooling long enough to admit that it was a bit on the boring side. Craig gets his first mega-hacky look of the series from Len as he awards her a 4 for the first dance. She did well enough in the dance-off for Craig to vote for her, but it was all in vain. Mr P: gutted. Me: gloaty. Never mind dear, I wonder if Kim Deal could ever be persuaded to do Strictly?

LYNDA BELLINGHAM AND DARREN BENNETT
This year's oldie-but-goodie is the Oxo Mum. She dances the tango to Under Pressure, and judging by the ever-changing looks on her face, it's all a bit too much for her already. Her slightly off-time chacha is not helped by a dress that makes her look like a salmon. I don't think she'll make it to the Bussell rounds, somehow.

ALI BASTIAN AND BRIAN SNAKEHIPS FORTUNA
Never heard of this one, but she's from that bastion of Great TV acting, Hollyoaks. Though she's probably a bit good for Hollyoaks now, and has moved on to The Bill. Really rather good. She's got the right combination of sweet scattiness to win over the Great British Public, and she can dance a bit too.

JOE CALZAGHE AND KRISTINA AGUILEROVSKA
I noticed in my mum's builder's copy of The Sun that tabloid journos are all over these two. Judging by the state of his dancing, I'd be inclined to ask a few questions about what they've been doing for the past few weeks.

Even though there were loads of dancers this week, there are another eight to get through next week, including Tanya Turner of Footba££er$ Wive$, and the lovely Phil Tufnell. Mark hates Tuffers, but his Test Match Special turns make me laugh, and he was a genius spin bowler (shame about the rest of his game, but you can't win 'em all, especially if you play for England).

On Thin Ice

On Thin Ice features Posh Totty Ben Fogle, Posh Sporty Totty James Cracknell, and another bloke called Dr Ed.

Dr Ed replaces Sick Boy Jonny Lee Miller, who wimped out after running the London Marathon with a feeble excuse about acting commitments or something. You haven't been in anything decent since before you were married to Angelina Jolie, Sick Boy. Don't pretend you still have a career.

What are they doing thoughbut? Well, it's officially one hundred years since Scott's catastrophic expedition to the Antarctic, and some weirdo has come up with the idea restaging said tragic catastrophe. As a race. Against the Norwegian equivalent of the SAS and other national teams - probably also full of their national SAS types. Honestly, you'd think there wasn't a war on.

Actually, maybe the fact that our SAS boys are a bit busy right now is why the BBC thought it would be a bloody good idea to send an ex Olympic rower, a TV presenter who likes dogs, and a bloke called Ed instead.

At the start of the "journey" (two weeks ago), Jonny Lee Miller issues the feeble excuse and hops off, making way for an X-factor style call for nutters volunteers to take his place. They whittle it down to two very fit and slightly odd blonde ladies and Dr Ed. Dr Ed wins, possibly because he is a) a doctor and good for emergency frostbite amputations; and b) because the chaps are already married to slightly scary-looking blonde ladies, who also happen to be pregnant. James and Ben probably didn't fancy explaining that one.

Dr Ed is put on a gruelling training regime to catch up with the other chaps, which seems to involve camping in a giant fridge and pulling tyres across the Highlands. Ben falls ill. James thinks he's a big girly wimp. Ben discovers that he has picked up a Flesh Eating Bacteria that is currently chomping through his arm! James says: "Huh!" and strides off into the Scottish twilight, tyre bumping behind him. Ben grows a beard and sits sadly at home while Dr Ed and James become best friends in the big fridge.

Ben gets better again, and rushes to catch up with Dr Ed and James. James growls and points his chin at the horizon. They have all grown beards. Perhaps beards are a good idea in the Antarctic because they trap the air around your face and make it less cold? I don't know, but there don't seem to be many razors down there.

At the start of the "race", we get to see what they're up against, but only the Norwegians are introduced. Yes, that's the Norwegian special forces, from Norway, where it is cold and it snows a lot. The Norwegians seem bloody nice chaps, and Ben gets on famously with them. James growls.

The chaps set a blistering pace for the first day: though I'm not sure how they can tell how far they've come without GPS. How did Scott et al do it? Didn't they just walk around in circles until somebody said: "I'm sure I've seen that iceberg shaped like Lily Langtry before..."

Antartica is cold, white, and appears to be flat, though GIANT CREVASSES can APPEAR SUDDENLY with VERY LITTLE WARNING, which could be DEADLY.(NB: this is the general tone of the narration throughout: it's like Masterchef with snow).

Blistering pace is the correct term, by the way, for it turns out that, while Dr Ed and Ben were very sensible about their feet, stopping and adjusting their footwear when their feet start feeling a bit tingly, James snorted derisively and strode through the pain. At the end of the day, his feet are frozen balls of pus, and poor old Dr Ed has to get busy with the penknife and Savlon. But it means that they have to slow down a bit.

The Norwegians catch up with them on Day 4 or thereabouts, and Ben's delighted to have a lovely chat with the lovely Norwegians. One of the Norwegians says he's going to propose to his girlfriend when he gets home. Ben says "Ahhh!" James scowls.

I fell asleep before the end but apparently James's exhausting pace leaves him...exhausted. By the time they get to the halfway point, it looks like James can't carry on. Oh noes!

Now, I thought this was a three-ep special, but it turns out we have another three episodes. Three episodes of snow, ice, gruesome closeups of blistered feet, red tents against the midnight sun, Ben being lovely and stoic and James howling at the moon. Can't wait...

CRAPPARITIONS

Apparitions is a new high profile BBC drama about an exorcist priest played by Martin Shaw, and it is jaw-droppingly awful and hilarious; mixing the kind of dated Satanic/Catholic horror tosh that went out of fashion with the Omen, with laughably clunky dialogue and every TV cliché you can think of.

Father Martin is, of course, a maverick priest who bucks authority to Do The Right Thing, and plays his character in an identical fashion to every other maverick cop, lawyer, judge, surgeon or consultant on any other TV drama ever. He is supposed to be in charge of filling in application forms for new saints or something, but his old exorcist pal in the Vatican (who you just know is going to die horribly in a couple of episodes time) keeps phoning him up and going “Ooo! Demons, etc!”

Father Martin Shaw also has a nun sidekick whose thankless role is to be the sensible one and make dull, badly written speeches about how he has to stop messing around saving little girls from evil demons and get on with his saint forms. Ten minutes into the show I am thinking of her as Sister Wetblanket. At one point a senior bishop or cardinal or something turns up to tell Fr Martin to stop messing around with his maverick exorcisms, and I half expect him to tell Fr Martin to turn in his badge and his gun cross and his bible.

The plot of the first episode combines LOL’s and Cringes in equal measure. It starts off with Mother Theresa dying (yes, that Mother Theresa!), and there is some talk of her being possessed by demons – wow, way to be really offensive in the first five minutes. At the moment she dies, a little leper boy in her hospital starts spazzing out and having fits – fast forward to the present and he is miraculously cured of his leprosy and has grown up into a hunky doe-eyed trainee priest who hangs around with Fr Martin and Sister Wetblanket. Everyone thinks his cure is a miracle, but HDETP thinks that demons made him hot so he could have lots of sinful gay sex! Occasionally a homeless looking bloke magically appears in his bedroom and talks to him in a growly voice in a foreign language, because as we all know - foreign = SATANIC!!!! The demons tell him that unless he starts getting some hot man2man action, they will repossess his non-leprous complexion. HDETP is thrown out of Priest School for being a gay and sits in a gay bar being tempted to have gay sex, because as we all know TEH GAYS = SATANIC!!!!

Anyway, while all this is going on, an annoyingly precocious little girl appears at the Fr Martin Cave and whines that her dad is possessed by demons. What a bitch, you just know she would have grassed her parents up to the KGB in Soviet Russia for making an unwise quip about grain quotas. FrMartin goes round to the house and finds a copy of Jerry Springer the Opera and a Dawkins book, Gasp!! Because as we all know – atheists = SATANIC!!! There is a failed attempt at an exorcism (with the Vatican bloke on speakerphone LOL – couldn’t he have just txted the prayers to Fr Martin or something) but Evil Atheist Dad starts speaking Satanic Foreign, throws Fr Martin’s stunt double at a wall and then goes off and weeps blood on a bench for a bit.

After a lot of bollocking around, it turns out that Evil Atheist Dad conceived his annoying ingrate brat of a daughter whilst queueing up to pay his respects to dead Princess Diana, to celebrate the fact that he just heard that Mother Theresa had died. Yes, read that again. I’m not making it up. WTF??? What it all boils down to is that the Dad is all Evil and the girl is all Saintly. Whatever. He’s about to kill ingrate child at that very spot in Kensington Gardens, when Fr Martin appears out of nowhere and starts with the exorcising. Foreign Growly Voice Demon Man tells Fr Martin that if he exorcises Evil Atheist Dad, then the “Indian Sodomite” (nice) will cark it. But what is our favourite doe-eyed Indian Sodomite up to? He goes to a gay sauna to get it on – ruh roh. People are always punished for having sex in shitty horror films! He sees some naked bloke in a steam room and thinks he is up for it, but the nekkid man turns out to be Growly Foreign Speakin’ Demon Bloke, who promptly skins Doe Eyed Indian Sodomite alive with a cut throat razor. Ouch! That’s what you get for not wanting to have leprosy! and for not being repressed! and for being a gay character in a shit program!

It is all “to be continued” and next week there are swarms of evil flies (yes, I’ve seen Amityville too, you hacks). I will be watching again, of course, as it is completely hilarious. Meanwhile, the first episode has managed to offend Catholics, gays, atheists, people who liked Mother Theresa, and people who like watching TV shows that aren’t rubbish. Score!!!

SCD: LIVE!

Well, we were faar too busy to blog the week-before-last's, but Don Warrington went, and I thought that was a bit of a travesty, and muttered about it on Facebook instead.

This week though, EEEEEEEEK! We got tickets for the show! It was all very last-minute, and Mr P had to stay at home with a bag of crisps and a cold-ridden small child. We went with Mark's lovely partner, E, and the lovely N, tanked up on surprisingly good BBC wine, and adrenalin.

There were still loads of couples to get through, so there wasn't much time to hang about. We were ushered up to a seat on the balcony, away from the celebs on the ground floor, and not on the front row either. We protested mildly, but was told cryptically that they were "the best seats in the house...trust us..." Mobiles and cameras were banned, but I did manage to sneak a moby pic of the stage while they were still setting up for Enrique Iglesias (cue disappointed groans from the cheap seats) A small army of women dressed in black, sporting radio headsets and clipboards, were clustered on the dance floor. We weren't quite sure what they did, but whatever it was involved bustling into the middle of the dance floor and chatting urgently with another clipboard carrier, and hugging Kenny Logan. Oh yes, and Dominic Littlewood was there. Ew.

Before we had time to get too sweaty, considering we were right behind a massive lamp that was pumping out greenhouse-style heat right onto our seats, on came a Dale Winton looky-likey who took us through the "Clap You BASTARDS!" routine, and told us how the evening would pan out. This is when we found out that there was no escape from Enrique Iglesias. The judges came on to muted applause, and Len wondered out loud if he looked "like a penis" in his strange 1970s Northern Club compere grey suit. A penis wearing one of those special issue NHS STD-proof condoms that were temporarily popular during the first big HIV/AIDS scare, perhaps.

CELEB WATCH

Kenny and Gaby were in the celeb front row. Kenny bounced around, hugging the floor crew, while Gaby chatted aloofly to various other celeb guests. We also saw Adrian Chiles with two children, who he seemed to ignore in favour of networking with other celebs. There was scurrilous speculation in the cheap seats that it was probably his access day. Meanwhile everybody was surprisingly deferential to Charles Kennedy (looking good), and Alan Hansen (who is quite tall, even when you're looking down on him) strode over to be Scottish with him and Kenny. We were so busy trying to work out who Adrian Chiles was going to network with next, that we didn't notice the front row on the other side of the floor, which was: Noddy Holder, Sue Johnston, Bradley and Dadley (who didn't speak or look at each other), and assorted relatives. We also saw Vernon Kaye and his very sweet little daughter, Roger Black, and Rain Man Charlie Slater. Anybody else we either didn't recognise, or they were under our balcony seat.

Enrique Iglesias was actually OK. He sang that sodding Hero song in tune, and was very professional, so we only had to endure one take. The dancers rumbaed around, with the women wearing bizarre batwing dress-o-tard type outfits. They were a bit ropey and out of time, but it looked like the swoopy camera covered for the ropiness. Then we got the Jersey Boys, who sang a Four Seasons song, naturally, since Jersey Boys is a musical about the Four Seasons - except I had to explain to the Young 'Uns who the Four Seasons were, which made me feel very old indeed. They were a bit thin and nervous, but the group dance samba was less ropey, so they had to go again. But who should walk in and take the seats in front of us, but....

ANT AND DEC!!!

Yep, in they walked with their lady companions, and we tried to look cool while taking secret pictures with our mobiles. Ant looks like he's been eating a few pies, and Dec looks even more like my mate Nige. Dec's lady companion was Sham off Easties-when-we-used-to-blog-it, and he kept casually putting his arm across her back, and then pulling it away when he realised that the civilians behind him were going: "ooooo!" and nudging each other.

Anyway, they were very quiet, and laughed politely at Bruce's lamer jokes, but didn't clap when they were told. God only knows what they were doing in the cheap seats, but maybe their status as Kings of ITV Saturday Night means that they can't be seen to be supporting BBC programmes or something.

ENOUGH SLEBBERY, GET ON WITH THE DANCING!

Oh yes, the dancing...

Boobwatch: Tess's dress was OK. She seems to have made up with the costume dept for this series

LISA & BRENDAN - PASO DOBLE

A rather sedate Paso, and Lisa's dress was pretty. We did like the Eye of the Tiger theme too, though Brendan should have taken it to the extreme and worn a little tigger mask. Lisa prowled around the stage waving her arms in a vaguely flamenco style. I didn’t think it was much good, but little did we know that it would be all downhill from there, paso wise. Bruno thought it was more like Vogueing than a proper Paso Doble, and Lisa got told to watch her shoulders.

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 27

ACTUAL JUDGES: 29

ANDREW & OLA - VIENNESE WALTZ

A Viennese waltz to Annie's Song, which is a proper waltz tempo, I suppose. Andrew got the feet right, and we saw footage of him being tied to Ola using a Pilates band to stop his bum sticking out. Andrew was all right whenever he was in hold, but reverted to total Dad Dancer whenever he was left to his own devices.

Len declared that "Bumgate is no longer an issue", and Craig was almost nice. We in the cheap seats were not.

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 21

ACTUAL JUDGES: 24

CHRISTINE & MATTHEW - PASO DOBLE

Christine Presenternator Paso-ed to Xtina Aguilera's Stronger, and made lots of duck faces to prove that she had PASSION. The judges weren't impressed. Arlene said it wasn't dramatic enough, and we were a bit meh too. But that might be because N said Ant had just farted.

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 22

ACTUAL JUDGES: 22

AUSTIN & ERIN - VIENNESE WALTZ

OK, he still looks like Brains off Thunderbirds, but he's actually rather cute from the neck down. And I was so NOT checking him out in the bar afterwards, so don't listen to Mark. The waltz was quite light and twinkly. Bruno said it was like watching The Return of the King. If he means the final film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I think I fell asleep during one of the interminable battle scenes (perhaps he means it had fifteen fake endings, dragged out for eons…). Anyway, Craig was a bit meh, and we saw Len do a great "hate Craig" face. The fleckles were good, apparently.

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 32

ACTUAL JUDGES: 34

CHERIE &WOLVERINE - PASO DOBLE

Ooh, this was a bit clunky, and there seems to be something in Cherie's contract that she can only wear monochrome. She stumbled right at the beginning of the dance, patently setting off in the wrong direction, and took her time to get back into the mood. The judges were quite kind, though

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 26

ACTUAL JUDGES: 31

HEATHER & BRIAN - VIENNESE WALTZ

Heather wore a pretty fuschia dress that did wonders for her rack. Up in the cheap seats, there was a heated debate between me and E about whether Brian was good or not. Actually in the flesh, he's more like the results of a twisted experiment to clone John Waters with Donny Osmond, and the gaydar was going crazy. Still, he's a damn fine dancer, and the waltz was really nice. Craig hated it.

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 32

ACTUAL JUDGES: 27 - boo!

MARK & HAYLEY - PASO DOBLE

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. Mark's boobs are bigger than mine, and the dance was stompy and out of time and featured many sections with Mark just running around at random. Vernon got a bit over-excited at Craig calling it a "painful shambles", but it was. Sorry Vernon. Mind you, Mark does have an absolutely incredible body...

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 8 (E gave it -4)

ACTUAL JUDGES: 16

TOM & CAMILLA - VIENNESE WALTZ

He had to interrupt his honeymoon to train with Camilla, who dragged him from the marital bed. Poor old Mrs Tom, is what I say. Tom had his slicked down 15-year-old-boy-from-WW2 hair back in effect. He comes across as a bit of a smug tosser, but the dance was very good indeed. The judges loved, except Len, who didn't like the missed fleckles.

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 35

ACTUAL JUDGES: 32

JOHN & KRISTINA - PASO DOBLE

Hilarious. Xtina was in a glittery dress in Palace colours, so they were doomed from the off. Most of the time, Kristina danced like a maniac while John stomped around to a vaguely military tempo, though there was a funny bit where he dragged her along the floor “like he was taking out the recycling”, and there was also a lift! Woo!

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 22

ACTUAL JUDGES: 21

RACHEL & VINCENT - VIENNESE WALTZ

N and I agreed that her 1950s prom dress was all wrong and kept rucking up in the wrong places, but the dance (to Everybody Hurts by REM), was pretty good. Len, who was surprisingly arsey and under generous with the points all night, wasn't excited. Len, the suit isn’t that bad!

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 33

ACTUAL JUDGES: 32

JODIE & IAN - PASO DOBLE

We nearly packed up at this point, but then there was ONE MORE COUPLE TO GO. Well, they weren't very good, to be honest, with more of the Lisa style voguing and arm wavery. I initially gave them a 7 because I quite like Jodie, but E persuaded me to mark her down a bit.

CHEAP SEATS VERDICT: 22

ACTUAL JUDGES: 26

After the show ended, we got packed off to the bar to drink another bottle of suprisingly good BBC wine, and compare notes. An hour later, we were all whipped in again for the results show. There was a mock dance competition involving members of the audience. A couple of drunk BBC designers on a night out had us all in stitches with their ladette moves, and even the celebs came out to have a look.

Mark was danced out, even though his dance off dance was better than the first time, and ripped off his shirt during the farewell section. Slut. Then it was off to the BBC bar to drink more wine and ogle Austin Healy watch who talked to whom.

We sat meekly going “oo look there’s so-and-so” for most of the evening, but were then fuelled by enough drink to start talking to people. We told John and Kristina they were fab (and Kristina thanked John for making her famous!), told Austin he was going to WIN!!! Commiserated with Karen for getting two duffers in a row, and MOTD2 fan N persuaded Adrian Chiles to pose for a photo!

SCD: BLOKES 2: ELECTRIC BLOKEALOO

mostly by Mark with interjections from Sarah

There are so many couples this time round that they are doing another round of all men/all women before going co-ed in two weeks time.

SARAH: we were in the ballot for tickets to this show, but LOST. We spent much of the show pointing at various no-mark "celebrity" guests and accusing them of nicking our tickets. Hamster-faced bloke off The Dragon's Den - you know it was you...

Tess is wearing a white pleated strapless number this week, which is not too bad. Is it just us or has she dropped a couple of cup sizes since last time?

The men are doing either the jive or the tango, which are two of the best ones to watch. For some reason, most (all?) of the men who did a salsa last time are now doing a jive – I thought they alternated between ballroom and latin? It seems a bit unfair that they didn’t.

Austin goes first, doing a jive in a sleeveless top that shows off his freakishly muscular and veiny arms. Everyone goes on about how awesome they are, but they look a bit grotesque to me, as though the arms of a 1970’s conan the barbarian Frazetta type painting have been grafted onto the head and body of a Thunderbirds puppet. Anyway, he is very good at the jiving and there is a funny bit where he strolls over to the judges and starts shimmying and making “rowwrrr!” faces at them. Austin is certainly v game. Len complains that he doesn’t like men winking at him, because THERE IS NOTHING CAMP ABOUT BALLROOM DANCING ALRIGHT???? Austin gets excellent marks and stays top of the leader board all night.


Andrew is doing a tango to 20th Century boy, which is a terrible idea. It starts off with Ola pretending to dance-kick him in the face, then there is a weird bit later on where he grabs her and head bangs in her general direction, like he's trying to peck her face off. Ola’s white and blue flowy dress is much better than that stupid catsuit she wore last time. He gets average marks.

Tom is jiving to that Black and Gold song that has been in the charts for, like, ever. Tom is dressed all in black and Camilla is wearing a gold dress that makes it look like she has been painted with glue and thrown into a sack of tinsel. The song is a bit slow really, but Tom is quite good (though not as sharp as Austin). There is one bit at the end where he throws himself onto his tummy and slides through Camilla’s legs. In the results show, we meet Tom’s fiancée and I can confirm that she is, in fact, a woman. He gets one point lower than Austin. The judges start trying to whip up a "Tom vs Austin" battle of the series situation or something like that. I think you need at least one protagonist to have a bit of charisma before that's going to happen.

John is tango-ing with Kristina, who has become one of my favourite pro-dancers ever. The tango is not bad, but everyone says John was too nice and not fierce and latin enough. I think he also loses marks for trying not to giggle when Kristina wraps her legs over his arm. He gets average to low marks again, but I think the public really like him. In the interview room, John says that passion and raw sexuality are his trademarks. Heh.

Gary is jiving too. Oh dear God. He patently fails to start at the right time and then drifts in and out of dance mode throughout the routine, counting grimly for dear life as he goes. There is one funny bit where Karen really obviously grabs him and shoves him into the right position. Craig says he was praying throughout the routine, Bruce says he didn’t see him on his knees and Bruno comments that plenty of other people have. Ha ha ha! You can’t say that at teatime! Gary is unsurprisingly in the dance off and the judges unsurprisingly don’t save him. I think Karen is more relieved than disappointed – after two clodhoppers in a row, she deserves someone good next series, pls!

Mark is tangoing, now with an ill advised attempt at a beard. He says he is shy, so Hayley makes him practise in his suit to get him in character. It is not bad, but kind of dull to watch, and Mark's scowly duck faces are a bit off-putting. They don’t really have much chemistry together and Hayley’s routines aren’t the most exciting. He gets the “tall people are spazzes” speech from the judges. He is also in the dance off and is much improved – he even makes a vague attempt at a Grr! Face – so the judges unanimously save him. Arlene tells Hayley to get Mark’s ass to an acting coach.

Don is also tangoing and is much better than he was last time. He keeps a lemon-sucking face intact throughout and the dancing is pretty good too. He says Lilia is awesome and she says, ‘no, you’re awesome!’ Having a partner who can come up with great routines makes such a difference in this show. He gets pretty good marks, but I find him a bit of a cold fish and I can’t really see him having much of a fanbase. In the Sladey house, we oldies remember his cat-like grace in Rising Damp, and think he's alright.

Next week the ladies will be doing either a quickstep (yay!) or a rumba (boo!). In the results show we have a pro-dance group rumba, which is exponentially more vom-tastic to watch than just two people doing it. There is one cool bit though where Kristina does forwards splits, then someone grabs her front foot and basically lifts it up into the air, while she keeps position. Wowsa.

The women do a group swing dance, which is very good and fun to watch (losing marks for an ill advised bit of invisible tromboning at the start). Jodie is shoved to the back a lot. Jessie seems to be quite good and obv performs it very well. I think Christine Presenternator is going to be a dark horse in this competition, as she dances pretty well, has come out of her shell in interviews and has an endearing goofy grin on her face the whole way through the dance.

The women seem to be very friendly and more of a "gang" in this series than the men who, apart from the oldies, seem to take it far too seriously. Well, that's our opinion anyway.

THE RESTAURANT: FLAGS OF OUR FAILURES

In a highly amusing episode, Raymond sends each restaurant a flag of a country and tells them to incorporate the food of that nation into their menu in whatever way they think best (cue lots of shots of people reading “Foreign food” type entries on Wikipedia!). To see how the evening goes, Raymond will not only send his inspectors, but also a party of diners from the country in question.

Team Sino-Cymru get Spain. They are not sure how to shoehorn Spain into their stupid Chinese-Welsh menu, so Mrs Welsh decides to ditch all that bollocks and have an entirely Spanish evening. Mr Chinese looks a bit grumpy but, in what will be a theme of the episode, folds like a cheap suit. Luckily, one of their chefs is married to a Portuguese woman, so they pick his brains for the menu (even though Spain and Portugal are DIFFERENT COUNTRIES DUH!!). The rest of the evening is spent with the aggressive sous chef bossing everyone around while chinese bloke stands around and meekly chops the odd onion. He is told off by Raymond for not running his own kitchen and they get put into the challenge.

Team Brood get Thailand. Mrs Brood sniffily says that she hates Thai food (though later it is implied that she’s never had it before!!) and can’t be bothered to mess around with her menu just because the person judging the competition told her to. They make a few vague concessions to Thailand, but the Thai diners think that spaghetti with sweet chilli sauce (mmm!!) is not very authentic, and the inspector also says the food is rubbish. Amazingly they escape the challenge, but Raymond tells them off for not being flexible.

Team Sourcing Shambles have a bit of a rubbish week. Mrs SS misses her children and cries a lot (which I’m sure is v upsetting, but seriously, why come on the show then???) and Mr SS has gut rot, which means he is too diseased to handle food. They say they’re going to quit, but then they don’t, so WHATEVER. They are allocated Japan, and add some basic Japanese dishes to their existing menu. The Japanese diners are all togged up with kimonos and say that it is not super authentic, but still tasty and with v fresh ingredients. Afterwards they set up karaoke and Mr and Mrs SS have a sing-song, so at least they cheered up a bit. Raymond puts them in the challenge for not being 100% committed, which is a travesty really as their evening went well and at least they made the effort with their menu.

Team Twee get Sweden and cleverly decide to give their existing menu a Swedish twist (ie turning a warm chicken salad to a warm reindeer salad. Ohs Noes, they ate Rudolph!!) The inspector says it is lush, but otherwise they don’t feature heavily – which is always a good sign on this show. They get restaurant of the week, and I am starting to think that they might win the whole thing.

Team LOL are given France (which is a bit harsh, as it is Raymond’s home cuisine) and live up to their name yet again. Intense one decides to make coq au vin and reads a bit from his recipe book about how it is the most common but most shittily done classic French dish. This will be important for later. They decide to write their menus in French, even though clearly none of them speak it even slightly (‘What is French for vegetables?’ ‘Vegetables!’ (pronounced with a slightly French accent)). The French diners absolutely piss themselves reading the menu and then complain that the coq au vin is made with white wine and tomatoes, instead of red wine. Doh. Raymond really rips the piss re the franglais menu (which, it turns out, is illiterate in English as well as French - ‘poached pairs’ are on offer!) and says that it is bollocks – he actually says bollocks pre watershed too. Uh oh. They still escape the challenge though, so I assume the food was all right.

Team Engerland get Mexico and are all like ‘Ee by gum, I don’t like the sound of this foreign muck’. It turns out that their oven has conked out (not the hobs, mind you, just the oven), so they decide to do a cold buffet and basically do a bit of salad and open a few bags of Doritos. Micky-from-League-of-Gentelmen also wears a ‘hilarious’ sombrero and poncho. He flogs margaritas to waiting customers (though he doesn’t really know how to make them), and while getting everyone totally lashed might be a good way to take their minds off the food, all the tequila in the world couldn’t make you think that a carrot and green bean wrap is a delicious Mexican snack. The Mexican diners think it is rubbish and refuse to pay, while Mickey grumbles in the kitchen that they are all ingrates. What a surprise, they are in the challenge.

For the challenge they have to prepare a three course meal and pitch it to first class air passengers. The chefs have to cook it in the scary enormo factory place then the front of house staff have to dish it up in the tiny airline kitchen and serve it in the proper 1st class type manner. Team Sino-Cymru make a Chinese menu but use frozen prawns, serve soggy noodles and horrid rice and also the service is not very good as Mrs Welsh wanders round with a face like a slapped arse throughout. Team Engerland make a Lancashire hot pot, but with a disgusting fake rosti of grilled raw potato instead of the trad slices of potato. Team LOL are helping them and there is a hilarious scene of the mild mannered one flapping around in the airplane galley for about five minutes looking for towel or something. Team Sourcing Shambles cook a yum looking lamb dish but spend so long buying the lamb that they barely have enough time to prepare it. Everyone forgets to serve Inspector Sarah. The airline like the lamb dish so much that they decide to add it to their menu, so Sourcing Shambles win.

Team Sino-Cymru and Team Engerland both get stick re the horribleness of their food, but clearly Team Engerland must get the chop after their dreadful Mexican debacle. Mickey jokes that he can’t believe he went out over a Chinese man who couldn’t cook rice – yes mate, that’s how shit you really were.

STRICTLY COME DANCING: SURVIVAL OF THE SLUTTEST

mainly by Sarah, plus Mr P and Mark

Now that Strictly... has a cast of dozens it takes two weeks to just get through the initial stages. Last week's boysfest showed that even John Sergeant could cut a rug - albeit very slowly and with a slightly embarrassed smirk. Phil Daniels made a swift exit as we soon realised why there were three Easties hasbeens in this year's comp.

Brucie and Tess had a few issues with Tess's dress - it was long and cripplingly tight with a train that would never pass muster at a health and safety assessment. Bruce made an awkward attempt at topical comedy - it wasn't as funny as watching Ian Hislop playing "Play Your Cards Right" but he tries...bless him.

First up was Jessie "Slutty Slater" Metcalfe dancing the salsa with Darren. Clips of their training mainly consist of them ROFLing a lot. She's a fine actress with a lovely smile and a filthy laugh. And about as graceful as an ice dancing chicken. Well she had plenty of oomph and chutzpah and wiggled her tassles with a big sexy grin enough to get Len slightly hot and bothered. Craig (is that a mullet?) mumbled something about a fine effort and Arlene told her to watch her hips and feet. Jessie and Darren scored the lowest marks with the judges but could the legions of Easties fans save her bacon?

Christine Presenternator was next with a fluffy rather cute foxtrot. I reckon she's from Derry but no-one was saying. Despite her constant “I’m rubbish, me” style interviews, she is very graceful and elegant. The judges praised her transformation from coltish young presenternator to fully-fledge dancebot in a matter of weeks.

On to Lisa Snowdon and Brendan dancing Brendan's saucy interpretation of a salsa - which seemed to involve Lisa doing an impersonator of a model in a blender. Lisa is wearing a grey and black dress – exactly the colours that first come to mind when one says CARNIVAL!!! You can hear the judges sharpening their knives when Brendan walks on and Lisa doesn't seem to think much of him either. The results show shows Brendan storming out of a backstage interview (I imagine him going to the gents to shout at his reflection and tell himself that he is a WINNAH!! What is he? A WINNAH!!), leaving Lisa sobbing into her sequins. Poor love. They get pretty low marks but are saved by the audience vote.

Sometimes I wonder about the great British public's attitude to the class struggle. Jodie Marsh Kidd dances a perfectly respectable foxtrot with some nifty high leg kicks. Let's face it she's the nearest thing in this competition to one of those sharp witted Amazons who are always trying to trick Bertie Wooster into marriage and a perfect candidate to whisk around a ballroom in a frothy frock. But the audience put her up for the chop - mainly I think because she's posh. Jodie is 6’5” in her heels – yowsa – so we get the predictable comments about how hard it is for tall people to control their gangling nerveless limbs. Craig says she has a lot of body to control and she did it well. That is a mullet.

Foghorn voiced Heather Small is next. Apparently her entire family threatened to disown her if she didn't go in for Strictly. Her partner is Brian Fortuna - King of the Salsa. He seems like a nice enough chap but there's something odd going on with his eyebrows. They seem rather ghostly apparitions of eyebrows that were. And they seem to have bred a brother on his top lip. Anyway eyebrows aside Brian is living proof of my theory that Americans whip the world's collective arse in two things: jazz and dancing. He's bloody fantastic and Heather didn't do too badly in her weird fringey green dress either - there was one really cool bit where she fell over backwards and he caught her by the neck. Bruno calls her the Queen of Salsa but says her musicality could improve. I often thought the same while listening to M-People songs.

Gillian Kaffee Taylforth is next with Anton. I really like her dress. It reminds me of those Edwardian country diary biscuit tins from the 1980s - but in a good way. Kaffee says she is having nightmares about SCD, but surely it can’t be any worse than having to pretend to desire Fill Mitchell? Anton does a very good job of propping Kaffee up around the dance floor and Kaffee smiles winningly but IT'S NOT ENOUGH! Not for the judges or the Great British Public anyway.

Rachel S Club 7 looks v pretty with backcombed hair and an aquamarine ruffly dress with a surprisingly long skirt (surprising when you remember the increasingly trampy outfits that Vincent had Louisa Lytton wear – perhaps he is saving that until the competition is more intense). Vincent has started doing a weird thing where he spits on his fingers and smoothes his eyebrows. He is trying to develop a “schtick” perhaps, but it just makes him look creepy. The routine is v complicated, with some crazy arm tangly moves (why yes, that is the official name for them) and Rachel carries it off with aplomb, albeit with her squeaky clean kids TV persona intact. Bruno predictably goes crazy over a female pop star and they get 8’s across the board.

Cheri Lunghi acted in Oliver Twist once, so Bruce makes a not unfunny joke about how they already have lots of Nancys on the show. James keeps going on that Cheri is well fit for an older bird. Tactful. He then says that Cheri keeps stabbing his feet with her high heels – perhaps these two facts are related. Cheri is foxtrotting in a dress with a bright green skirt that looks a bit like a lettuce. She is very good and there are some sway-y side-to-side bits out of hold that she nails perfectly. All the judges rave about her and she gets 3 8’s and a 9. Yeah well, just wait until jive week.

Mr P writes: There was a collective boy dance (boylective?) called a merengi I think which seemed to involve getting in a sporty huddle at various points and then shooting out a couple from the mob like a Brendan from a disappointment. There is one bit where Tom from Holby waves his arms around like he is trying to karate chop Camilla. Gary Rhodes seems to have improved. John Sergeant was rubbish, but funny. Austin Metro is possibly not as good at Latin as Ballroom. Mark Foster looked a bit dorky (Blogger Mark, who is also v tall and dances like a dork, sympathises). The pro dance was a showcase for new dancers Brian, Hayley and Kristina Aguilerovska, and involved shaking heads violently to and fro (but not in a headbang way) to Michael Jackson's Beat It. I was interested to see if the session guitarist was going to replicate the famous Eddie Van Halen solo or go for something different and push the boundaries. Van Halen it was. I can't help feeling it was an opportunity missed.

THE RESTAURANT: PORK LIFE

This week the restaurants are each given half a whole pig, together with a butcher to help them convert it into din dins. They are told to use all of it.

Team Syno-Cymru have a themed pork night (snigger) and get round the problem by giving each punter a huge helping of meat.

Team Engerland go further into League of Gentlemen territory by describing deep fried lungs and heart as “crispy pork salad”. Vom.

Lots of teams make a gross terrine out of BRANES and CHEEKS! Mmm, seconds please. These do not prove to be very popular.
Team Father/Daughter struggle with service yet again. Father makes some shitty flyers by typing “We haz a pork!!” out with a dot matrix printer, hacking them up with a rusty bread knife and then giving two away before getting bored and going home. He is so annoying – presumably he thought “front of house” meant swanning round with a glass of wine saying “Did you enjoy your meal?” a few times. There is a clip of him wheedling for a tip and the customers saying “um no, the service was shit.”

Team LOL aren’t getting much custom out on a country road and need to rethink their marketing. Also their waiting staff seem to be v rubbish. Mild Mannered one has a nervous breakdown, while the Intense one ponces round in the kitchen doing intense cheffy things.

Team Twee win and Teams Father/Daughter (because he’s rubbish), Engerland (for their deceiving menu) and LOL (for not acting like a team) are put into the challenge – they have to serve a meal for an Oxford College one evening. I miss that one, but Father /Daughter go out, with him squarely getting the blame. I bet that’ll make for a tense Xmas dinner this year…

THE RESTAURANT: ROAD TO NOWHERE

Last week wasn’t as much fun as the first, hence my tardy recapping. To begin with, Raymond gives tips on how to charge more for a meal – like if you have a bowl of super-noodles you could garnish it with some grated cheddar and call it super-noodle deluxe or something (he used different ingredients tho…) Awesome!

Then the couples have to do a “customer only pays what they think the meal is worth” night and it generally goes better than the first night. Team Father/Daughter try to avoid their opening night service meltdown by only taking about two bookings for the whole day. Team Twee take too many bookings and have to get people to wait hours for their tables, also the food quality suffers a bit. Team Sino-Cymru can’t cook rice, which I would think is a bit of a drawback for Chinese food. Team Gay can’t be bothered to make any of the changes suggested by Raymond, sigh. Team Sourcing Shambles don’t order enough food and reduce portion size, so by the end of the evening the punters are just getting 1/256th of a scallop each.

Team LOL have their belated opening night and it all seems to go well, with our heroes bickering adorably about the presentation of sliced bread. Sarah turns up and likes the look of the food, but isn’t actually given any cutlery to eat it with. When she finally does, she says it’s very good but that the menu isn’t descriptive enough.

Everyone gets about ½ - 2/3 of what they would have charged. Mean mean customers!

(BTW, there are two teams who haven’t featured much, so I haven’t given them stupid nicknames yet – they will be Team Engerland, who are obsessed with English food, and Team Brood, who have a zillion kids and want to open a restaurant where other people can go with a zillion kids and not be judged)

Team Brood are deemed to be the best restaurant of the week, mainly because of Mr Brood’s sparkling front of house personality.

Raymond gives every couple some feedback, then announces the other couples who must “fart to keep their restaurant” along with Team Father/Daughter. It’s Team Gay, who are generally rubbish, and Team Twee - gasp! - who should have done better and let themselves down. You can’t boot them out! Husband Twee is the only vaguely good looking man on the show!

For their task, each couple must team up with some non-losers to create dishes and serve for the lunch shift at a busy motorway service station. The last time I ate at a service station I ended up vomiting profusely by the side of the M6. Anyway, I missed most of this as I was late home and forgot to tape it, but basically…

Team Father/Daughter do the best, financially, but get told off for not doing a meat dish and then taking a photo of some shop chocolate brownies and passing it off as their own food. Apparently this is a CRIME!!!! Sarah says their fish pie is v nice, but their fishcakes are like rocks – there is a funny shot of her eating a bit, then making a pained expression and wondering how she’s going to swallow it. Team LOL are helping them, and the mild mannered one has to wear a comedy ostrich outfit to lure in the kiddies.

Team Twee make the best food but they take ages to get it together and don’t have time to take proper photos. Instead they have shitty hand felt-tipped posters. Mrs Twee’s idea of promotion is to make some “Cheerful Soul” stickers (that’s the name of their restaurant. Vom) and chase irate motorists round the service station. They do second best and are praised for the food, but totally lambasted for the dreadful promotion. Mrs Twee runs off to cry somewhere and I shout “Where’s your cheerful soul now, eh?” at the telly.

Team Gay make decent food but have a disaster with the humungous carrot cake they try to make. It takes EONS to bake, so eventually everyone forgets about it and it burns. Heh. Cue shots of various cooks trying to scrape the black bits off, but in the end it is deemed unsellable. They do the rubbisherest and are fired basically, which is not surprising as they didn’t bother to follow any advice, had no clue, no drive and no sorbets. There is a ‘poignant’ shot of them wandering the empty halls of “Sorbets and Seasons” (tee hee) saying that they were surprised how hard it was to run a restaurant, what with all the late nights and early starts, etc. What did you expect, fool? I pity the fool, etc etc.

Next week! More cooking and more crying, I expect.

STRICTLY: THE BLOKES!

It’s showtime! The usual non-witty non-banter from Bruce and Tess (who is wearing a nice dress for once). They introduce the three squillion contestants and inform us that the men are competing in either the waltz or the cha cha cha and that the women will do the group dance and compete solo next week. Because I am evil, I instantly check to see that John Sergeant is wearing a tux, and thus won’t be shaking his booty to torrid latin beats this week. Damn it.

Tom off Holby is first, after some hilarious soap-tastic clips of women in Holby slapping him, kissing him, slapping then kissing him etc. I still don’t think he’s that cute, but never mind. He dances the cha x 3 in a chest-rug revealing electric green shirt and he’s pretty good – he looks like a proper dancer and gyrates his hips around in the approved fashion. He even pulls retarded dance faces. He gets pretty good scores for the judges, who say it is the best first male dance ever and he has loads of potential. Bruno makes a laboured Tom-cat joke, so at least that’s out of the way.

Phil Parklife Daniels is doing with a waltz with Flavia Cachache Coming Atcha. She is wearing a weird yellow dress with loads of pompoms and trailly bits. Phil looks so incredibly stiff and uncomfortable that it is like a comedy routine without a punchline. I know they have to lean away from each other in the waltz, but Phil looks so uncomfortable, and doesn’t seem to take a breath the whole routine, which gives the impression that Flavia stinks of rotten meat or something, which I’m sure isn’t the case. Bruno says he scrubs up well for a bit of rough but Craig says he’s common. Shut up Craig. He gets bad marks.

Gary Rhodes annoys Karen by wanting to learn every little thing perfectly, thus taking forever. He says he is a perfectionist. He is also rubbish at the cha cha cha. Karen is wearing a weird silver dress inspired by assymetrical 1980s bat wing jumpers, though I am pleased to say she still pulls lots of mad expressions while dancing. Gary jerks around stiffly and does vague things with his arms. The routine is quite odd, including a part where Karen leans over like an ironing board and Gary gestures above her like an evangelical preacher on mute. He gets dreadful marks, including a one from Craig ‘for turning up’.

Austin Healy does a waltz. He looks very strange with his weirdly unbelievable hair and botox-y face. Matt Dawson pops up to whinge about Austin putting him off when he was competing years ago. Get a job, Matt. Austin is worried that he might forget everything and have to do the robot for five minutes. I’d love to see that. He is a bit smug and irritating, but at least he doesn’t act like dancing is a great insult to his masculinity and he doesn’t know how he’s going to cope. He is very good too and Arlene suspects him of going to a posh school that made him do dance lessons or something. Austin denies it. He gets a 9 from Len Von Overmarker, which doesn’t really leave him much room for improvement over the rest of the competition, and 8s from the rest.

Mark Foster is super tall and his hands are even bigger than Zoe-Slater-off- Eastenders’. Her is v handsome though, and looks great in evening dress. He dances a waltz and is not bad, but rather stiff and nervous looking and is so desperately trying to remember his moves that you can almost see the cogs turning in his brane. Everyone says he has potential and needs to loosen up and perform more. Arlene is all “hellooo handsome!!!” – so he is the designated contestant that she will drool over all series (though my internets research hint that Mark might be gay). He gets respectable marks from everyone except Craig, who deems it D.U.L.L. and gives him a 3. Ouch. Mark looks mortified. And sweaty.

Andrew Castle and his strangely huge ‘bloke off dynasty’ hair is dancing a cha cha cha with Ola, who is wearing a bizarre skin tight catwoman style outfit with cutout sections. Even she doesn’t have the body to carry that off. Andrew gives it a shot, but is a total dad dancer and vaguely embarrassing to watch, especially when he has to shake his hands in the air like he just don’t care, when clearly he does care. Deeply. Luckily for him, he is being judged on a special scoring system which only applies to GMTV presenters, and as he wasn’t as dreadful as Fiona or Kate, he gets surprisingly good marks.

John Sergeant is doing a waltz with Siberian Kristina, who as well as looking like a sexy 1960s spy, looks like a less evil version of Christina Aguilera. They seem to get on well and have a quite a sweet relationship, with Kristina making sympathetic ‘aww’ faces when Bruce mocks John’s age and terrible bookies’ odds. The waltz is not too ambitious and pretty good, and everyone praises their rapport and evident enjoyment. He gets respectable marks. Yay, go John and Kristina!

Finally Don Warrington (off Rising Damp and lots of other things) is doing the cha cha cha. He is kind of stompy, stiff and expressionless, and at one point clearly goes left when he was supposed to go right. There are vague hints of non rubbishness though. Craig says he has natural rhythm. Oh Craig. Everyone says he is all right but not great and he needs to perform more. He gets fairly shit marks. Don is pleasantly dry and dead pan in interviews, but I can’t see him having much a fan base and think he’ll be in the bottom two for sure.

The ladies do a latin themed group dance to the rubbish Lil Kim etc version of Lady Marmalade. It is hard to see what is going on, with everyone thrashing around and the camera rotating in opposite directions, but from first glance – Gillian and Jodie appear to be rubbish; Rachel Stevens and Lisa Snowden seem to be quite good. Christine has potential, and Jessie just stands there and shimmies on the spot while Darren gyrates around at her feet.

The results show is now an hour long. Sigh. Tess is wearing a weird dress with a sort of pelmet for the neckline. The pro’s do a group foxtrot. Bette Midler pimps her new greatest hits album, Alesha and Matt do their Crazy in Love dance again (cut to Flavia looking under-joyed). Everyone discusses last night’s shenanigans and there is a recap of the marks. There is a group dance with everyone involved, but again, it is impossible to see what’s going on with so many people. I like the clip of the training though, with Vincent fondling Austin’s manly pectorals. Forget Tom-off-Holby, Vincent always sends my gaydar into complete meltdown.

Results time – Austin and Tom get through! Andrew and Mark (hurray!) get through! I am also pleased that John gets through. OMG, Gary gets through and Karen looks like she’s going to have a coronary. It is Parklife and Don in the bottom two. The judges advise them to be less shit this time. Thanks for your piercing insight, judges!

They both dance again and are both rubbish again and both make lots of obvious mistakes. Don at least tries to smile this time. Craig saves Phil! Gasp! Arlene saves Phil! Double gasp! Bruno saves Don! Hurray! Casting vote-meister Len also saves Don. Phew. There is something a bit irritating about Phil Daniels and he was rubbish in Eastenders, so I am glad he got the boot. Perhaps he can go and feed the pigeons to cheer him up, I understand that that gives him an enormous sense of well being.

Nest week: The women dance solo!

The week after that: I look forward to Mark Foster and John Sergeant wearing tight and revealing latin costumes, but for completely different reasons!