As someone who relies on Strictly during the winter months the way others might rely on a 10,000 lux SAD lamp, I had optimistically hoped that once Dave Arch and his orchestra had tuned up and southern Hertfordshire’s spray tanners had been conscripted and Claudia Winkleman had peeked wryly and reassuringly through her fringe, we would be able to start afresh and enjoy it with impunity.
I have maintained, throughout its grim summer of scandal, throughout the allegations and the investigations, and despite dark clouds over the future of this series, that come autumn we would once again be transported to somewhere happy and special and safe while the contestants gurned through their Charlestons or blithely Quickstepped to “Puttin’ On the Ritz”.
The BBC would clean up its act – it has to, this is Strictly – get some chaperones in, introduce some new professionals, stop the rot, and we would allow ourselves to be cocooned until Christmas in this joyful, playful little world where I, at least, belong. Many claimed it was doomed, that the magic was lost for ever. That is a future inconceivable to me.
Obviously, I was naïve. Because our fixation with Strictly – which has for many years been hysterical and totally disproportionate for a celebrity dance competition – has reached the point where it is no longer merely backstage rumours that threaten to derail the show but now every episode is dissected for evidence of the production’s institutionalised toxicity. Everything that is not slick, planned or perfect is proof of unsavoury behaviour, of souring relationships, of another brewing scandal it cannot afford.
I’m referring this time to opera singer and presenter Wynne Evans and his professional dance partner Katya Jones, who have reassured the public that they were joking around when, on Saturday night’s show, cameras captured first her moving his hand from her waist, across which it appeared to be creeping, and then later her snubbing his high-five and scowling at him.
Watch the videos for yourself – everyone else is. In fact I can currently see in the corner of my eye the clips being replayed on ITV News, a sign that, when it comes to Strictly, the kind of thing that might once have made a tabloid gossip item is now elevated to an incident of national importance.
The BBC says its welfare team has investigated the apparent tension between them and will not be proceeding further. Jones said in an Instagram post that “even the idea that it made me feel uncomfortable or offended me in any way is complete nonsense”.
And Evans said on his Monday morning Radio Wales show that he was heartbroken. “Katya and I are really, really close; we’re really good friends and, on Saturday night, we made a stupid joke. It was a stupid joke that went wrong. We thought it was funny. It wasn’t funny. It has been totally misinterpreted.”
Tricky one. Either you believe them, move on and everyone keeps dancing – because after all, these couples literally have to touch each other all the time and develop intense relationships quickly and there may well have been nothing out of the ordinary in either party’s demeanour.
Or, like those in the more vocal corners of social media, you believe that these denials are the result of some hasty diktat from a panicking production executive on high trying to avoid another PR disaster concerning men’s treatment of women on this programme; that we’ve heard of “rifts” between couples before that, too often, have indeed ended up being signs of something more sinister; or at the very least that Jones is the victim of a handsy bloke who is rightly being called out on the greatest and most public stage possible, the BBC’s flagship family show.
The brief footage is uneasy, and certainly awkward. And though I do think that as an engine of popular entertainment and with incredible influence, scrutiny of Strictly is well-justified, the only conclusion us spectators can draw from all this has nothing to do with the relationship between Wynne and Jones but about ourselves: we just don’t trust Strictly anymore.
No matter how well-oiled the machine or how sparkly the dancefloor or how reliably crap are Tess’s jumpsuits, the famous “magic” of this show relies, in the end, solely upon its audience’s belief in it as a place of secure, escapist delight.
This year, we watch in the knowledge of how much of that escapism and delight has been under false pretences. And that is something that will take a lot more than a few weeks of jolly group numbers to forget.
