Strictly Come Dancing always seemed to me like the no-brainer reality TV show from a contestant perspective. At best, it’s seriously career-enhancing; at worst, you face the prospect of dropping out after a couple of weeks adorned in sequins.
Stay in long enough and you actually learn to dance while shedding pounds, all while taking part in a show that trades in everyone having the time of their lives rather than people falling out with each other. Not a patch on sticking your head in a fishbowl of cockroaches on I’m a Celebrity…, anxiously waiting to see if your new beau will cheat on you in Love Island’s Casa Amor, or being the Faithful everyone turns on at the Traitors roundtable.
One gets the impression that BBC executives bought into the Strictly fairytale as much as viewers, which perhaps explains why they appear to have been caught off guard by the allegations of bullying and abusive behaviour on the show. Strictly’s record has never been unblemished on this count, but until relatively recently the show has ridden the wave. Then, last year, Amanda Abbington quit the show a few weeks into the run, citing “personal reasons” at the time but later accusing her professional partner, Giovanni Pernice of “threatening and abusive behaviour” and claiming that participating in the show had left her with PTSD. Other female celebrities have also spoken about their experience of him . Pernice has repeatedly denied any improper behaviour, but the BBC is not using him in this year’s show while it conducts an investigation.
Then two........