Fishy Come Dancing

I am not a fan of TV shows where one has to phone in and vote. I tend to get cross every time I get a phone bill that shows that the wife and kids have sometimes cost me more than a months licence fee in call charges to Last Choir Standing, Big Brother, X Factor or other subliminal pay per view programmes.

When one pays for these sort of programmes (twice) one hopes that at least the voting is fair and nothing is fixed but there was something very fishy about the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing, something that just doesn't add up.

In week 10 John Sergeant dropped out of the programme voluntarily, he was not voted off. Despite the fact that he had gone a vote was held on November 24th and Jodi Kidd was knocked out of the competition too. With two celebrities leaving in week 10, rather than the expected one, the scheduling should have left the series one episode short. But the series continued on schedule without losing an episode.

In week 13 we are told that an unforeseen difficulty in the way the votes were calculated meant that the vote off was canceled so three contestants made it to the final rather than two.

As there was no change to the schedule and no episode was lost there can only be two possible explanations:

1) The John Sergent controversy was a fix contrived to boost ratings

2) The show intended to have three in the final all along and the excuse for voting difficulties last week was a lie.

Which ever of these two explanations is the correct one the BBC has broken trust with viewers who pay for these phone in programmes yet again. Despite all the controversy and criticism and promises to clean up their act it appears that nothing has changed!