A former Strictly Come Dancing professional has hit out at the show’s judges for their “ridiculous” scoring on the latest series.
New Zealander Brendan Cole played a huge part in the BBC show from its 2004 conception until he left in 2018. Now, the 47-year old has voiced his displeasure at the high scores dished out in the opening two weeks by judges Craig Revell Horwood, Shirley Ballas, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke.
Week two saw Layton Williams and Nikita Kuzmin handed an impressive 36 out of 40, with fellow pairings Amanda Abbington and Giovanni Pernice, Angela Rippon and Kai Widdrington, and Ellie Leach and Vito Coppola also recording scores north of 30.
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While Brendan recognised Layton and Nikita were perhaps worth of their marks, he suggested others were “way too high”. “Layton Williams could have easily scored four tens – that’s how good it was,” he admitted to The Sun. “If not the best number that Strictly’s ever seen, then very close to it and it’s week two.”
Brendan continued: “It’s two fellas dancing together, making an ensemble look really cool – that’s quite something, that’s quite an achievement. I think the marks were way too high across the board [for the other couples] and obviously Les’ [Dennis] two – that was about right.
“You can’t just be throwing out these ridiculous numbers because you’ve got nowhere to go in the following weeks and if you’re giving a seven or an eight for something that’s lacking in technique and lacking in performance, just because it feels nice to do it, then you’re in the wrong job.”
Brendan went on call out an eight from Anton, which was “no more than a six” adding that judges give out “too much praise” rather than offering “objective criticism”. Previous winner Brendan, who won the first series of the show with newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky, explained that the current batch of celebrities would in fact benefit from knowing “where they’ve gone wrong” and where “they stand compared to others”.
But he’s not disappointed in every member of the panel. The ballroom expert singled out Craig, however, who he said “hit the nail on the head” with the majority of his scores.
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Earlier this week, meanwhile, Strictly viewers accused accused Shirley of sexism, after she gave lower scores to female-celebrity pairs. Many saw her lower scoring of Angela, Ellie and Zara McDermott as a push against their success, as her fellow panellists awarded higher marks.
Shirley was even booed by some in the audience of the BBC dancing contest. Fans were quick to jump to social media to vent their frustrations on Saturday with one viewer writing: “Of course, another low score from Shirley for a woman.”
A second fan said: “Shirley being the lowest score for [Ellie] again…surprise surprise”. Whilst a third fan called out her score for Angela, tweeting: “Never mind the young pretty woman, our Shirley will score even lower for the older woman. She’s consistent”.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
