News of John Sergeant’s departure from Strictly Come Dancing spread like wildfire today. I almost choked on my lasagna when a workmate told me over lunch. You could see how involved the public is because almost every desk I passed by today at work was reading something about this announcement from the man himself.
I know I have sort of slagged off Mr John Sergeant and his dancing in a previous post but I have made it clear that it wasn’t a personal attack. I was more disappointed with the public and how talent is considered as talent than Mr Sergeant himself. But his decision to leave the competition, however, is something that I genuinely admire. He felt that if he stayed, there is a huge chance that he would win the contest and that, to him, would simply be an unpleasant victory. He said that it (winning) would be a “joke too far.”
In fairness, his performance last Saturday (15 Nov) with an American Smooth was far better than his cha-cha-cha. As usual, the choreography by Kristina Rihanoff was outstanding.
To that end, there is nothing left to say but to extend deepest gratitude to Mr Sergeant for the entertainment!
P.S. Apologies if you are not able to play the YouTube video clips on the previous post. According to the BBC, there are clips that are not available for playing outside the UK due to the way the BBC is funded through the TV licence fee.
[...] I would have expected the show’s producers to make these calculations before the show. They had the entire week to make the numbers. Check for all possibilities and make a plan out of it. In fairness, they did realise it but it was all too late. The numbers were already flashed on the TV screens for the public to ’save their favourites.’ So they chose the lesser evil: put all couples through, no one gets eliminated. From their point of view, there would be controversy whichever way. There were people in the message boards who gave kudos to the BBC for reacting so quickly. I say it was really in bad taste. They should have done the ‘roll-over’ the weekend when John Sergeant quit. [...]