Put down the glitterball. Mop up the sequins. The news – oh, the unthinkable news – has arrived: Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman are quickstepping away from Strictly Come Dancing.
‘We have loved working as a duo and hosting Strictly has been an absolute dream,’ the pair announced on Instagram this morning. ‘We were always going to leave together and now feels like the right time.’ You can almost hear the wails from Broadcasting House: how sad, how shocking, how very bittersweet! Another era of prime-time ratings dribbling down the drain.
The show wasn’t just about the ratings or the romance rumours or, even, the glamour. For viewers like me with two right feet, it was always about the comfort factor
Can anyone even remember that first episode in 2004, when Tess was introduced to the nation as Bruce Forsyth’s blonde, bimbo-esque companion? I can. Bless her, her to-camera skills were hardly Bafta-winning; her post-routine rundowns with the stars were stilted to say the least. In the 21 years since, dare I suggest, not much has improved. But what she lacks in one-liners, she at least makes up for in northern charm, style and – let’s face it – fake tan.
Then there was Claudia: drier, darker and quasi-established in media circles when she started hosting Strictly’s spin-off, It Takes Two, that same year. Every weekday evening, she practised footwork with the professionals in her Louboutin boots; tried (and often failed) to chemistry-test the couples; quipped that her job didn’t involve much except ‘getting a fake tan and doing some reading’. She became the sardonic queen of the Strictly sofa, and a role on the main show inevitably followed.
It was a risky move, in many ways, to name the pair as the show’s presenters from 2014. ‘Brucie’, of course, had been the tap-dancing heart of Saturday-night TV: the quick-thinker who salvaged Mark Ramprakash’s salsa in series four, and responded to Ann Widdecombe’s disastrous series eight samba with the words: ‘One more time?’ Some (mainly men) were quick to tout the female line-up as little more than virtue-signalling, another example of ‘woke gone mad’ at the Beeb. But the viewers didn’t seem to mind. Series 12 remained one of the most-watched shows on British TV, with 10.6 million tuning in to see presenter Caroline Flack lift the glitterball. To corporation bosses, no doubt, the figures were all that mattered. Strictly’s supremacy reigned on.
But, of course, it wasn’t just about the ratings or the romance rumours or, even, the glamour. For viewers like me with two right feet, it was always about the comfort factor. For all its tweeness, on a cold, rain-splattered autumn day (very much like today) there’s no better balm than making a mug of tea and curling up on the sofa with Strictly. I can almost measure my adult life via seasons of the show: hungover Sundays with university housemates arguing over if Faye Tozer or Stacey Dooley should win the 16th series (it was, to my sadness, Stacey); a short-lived attempt to learn to samba-dance after being hypnotised by Kelvin Fletcher’s hips; frantically packing for the Covid Christmas lockdown while Bill Bailey tapped to ‘Rapper’s Delight’. There were other memorable moments, too, of course: the deaf actress Rose Ayling-Ellis’s ten seconds of silence, Ed Balls stumbling to ‘Gangnam Style’, Angela Rippon proving she’s bendier at 79 than most women are at 19. All these, and more, on Tess and Claudia’s watch.
Now, after 11 years together, the presenting powerhouse is waltzing off into the sunset. The inevitable question is: why? The inevitable theory: are they escaping a sparkling yet sinking ship? Since 2023, when actress Amanda Abbington accused her partner Giovanni Pernice of bullying (which he denies), Strictly has struggled to shake off the scandals. It’s lost two professionals following a recent misconduct probe (Pernice and Graziano di Prima who admitted kicking one of his celebrity partners), is investigating two stars for on-set drug use and been dragged into reports that a former dancer has been arrested for rape. Add to that the conveyor belt of Z-list ‘celebrities’ – not least the beleaguered Thomas Skinner who said he ‘[wished] I never done’ the show this year – and it’s little wonder that audiences have plummeted to just 6.4 million. Tess and Claudia, perhaps, are too savvy to clean up the mess.
Finding someone who will won’t necessarily be difficult. Janette Manrara and Fleur East – a former pro and contestant, respectively – could be elevated from their seats on the It Takes Two sofa. Proud Lancashire lass AJ Odudu, who came third in 2021, would be a more charismatic continuation of Tess’s northern lineage. But will that be enough to keep the show dancing? BBC bosses can only hope.
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