Strictly Come Dancing fans were up in arms when Pete Wicks breezed into the semi finals last Sunday night, without facing a dreaded dance-off, even after stumbling in his quarter-final performance.
Despite this mishap, one Strictly professional has stepped forward to defend Pete’s progression to this weekend’s semi final. The previous Sunday’s surprising outcome, which saw Tasha Ghouri enter a dance-off despite regularly leading the scoreboard, alongside Montell Douglas, resulted in the departure of the Olympian from the BBC show once the judges had their say.
This turn of events prompted a flurry of disappointment on social media, with fans decrying it as a ‘fix’. One viewer vented: “What a joke! Pete should not be in the semi final! The producers and judges knew how to fix the leaderboard to get Tasha in the bottom 2 so that she can knock out Montell…cos she will probably be in the bottom as well #Strictly,” while another aired their bewilderment: “I don’t even watch but how does Pete keep getting through? over montell and tash? #strictly.”
Nevertheless, ex-Strictly pro Ola Jordan, who graced the dance floor for nine seasons until her departure in 2015, has voiced her support, insisting that former TOWIE celebrity Pete deserves his slot in the finals alongside partner Jowita Pryzystal. Ola rejects the idea that the public’s continuous backing for Pete is unjustified.
She remarked: “They vote for who they want to vote for, and if he’s getting a lot of fans voting for him, then he deserves to be there. He’s improving. And I know he’s messed up; he’s done so badly this week,” reports the Express.
“But I think it does get to the point where the audience gets bored of that, and eventually, they want change. But if they do, they do. And fair play to him; he’s improving and he’s definitely working hard. You can tell his posture has improved and overall, his dancing has improved.”
In her conversation with Mecca Bingo, Ola also shared her thoughts on the scoring system, which combines judges’ scores with public votes. The lowest-scoring pairs face off in a dance-off before the judges decide who leaves the competition.
She explained: “It’s a TV show, at the end of the day. As long as the judges get the leaderboard right, then it doesn’t matter what the result is. Sometimes, when the leaderboard isn’t right, that’s when it’s tricky. It’s not just the public vote; it’s combined with the leaderboard.”
Ola wasn’t taken aback by Montell’s departure over the weekend, stating: “I predicted she would be in the bottom two again with one of the others, and we didn’t know who else would get the least public votes.
“The thing with Pete and Chris (McCausland) is, they’re both non-dancers and the public loves them. You can’t argue with that. This is what the public loves; this is what Strictly is about. If they are being voted for, they deserve to be there, and they shouldn’t be getting a hard time from people because, at the end of the day, this isn’t just a proper ballroom competition.
“Maybe the producers need to look at that and realise that’s what people want to see. People want to see the non-dancers, especially since Pete, though at the bottom of the leader board, has still improved a lot from day one.”
When asked about her predictions for the winner of the glitterball trophy, Ola mentioned: “Well, I think JB (Gill) is doing so well with Lauren (Oakley) at the moment that he’s become one of the contenders for me, which I didn’t expect when I saw him the first few weeks.
“Also, Tasha, she’s amazing, but as you can see now, she’s been in the bottom two, so she’s obviously not getting the most votes, that might go against her in the final because she was bottom of the leader board, so she’s obviously getting fewer votes than Sarah (Hadland) since she was at the same points as Sarah. She’s getting fewer votes than Chris, and fewer than Pete. So, is she going to win now? I don’t know. But I definitely think she should be in the final.”
Strictly Come Dancing is on BBC One and BBC iPlayer