Strictly Come Dancing – Week 1 review

At last, the wait is over, and the 6th series of Strictly Come Dancing is underway. When I start writing this blog, I intended to make it a daily affair, but I quickly realised that I would struggle to compete with the stream of news and articles being generated by a combination of tabloid newspapers and the blogosphere…

So, I’ve decided that whilst I’ll try to keep writing,  I’ll probably limit myself to weekly reports of the weekend shows. Obviously if something else catches my eye, I may still post, but if you’re looking for a daily fix, I suggest you go elsewhere…

However, if it’s an intelligent weekly report that you’re after, you’re in the right place, so read on…

Len Goodman’s autobiography – part II

I’ve already written a post with a round-up of Strictly Head Judge Len Goodman’s interview with the newspaper that’s serialising his autobiography. Following on from the interview, the Daily Mail has published 2 extracts from the book.

Read on if you want to see what the highlights are without having to read the full articles on the Mail website. I can’t promise that the extracts are a riot though – personally I’d prefer to hear about Strictly that Len’s life before he was famous…

Strictly Press Round-up: 1st September

I had forgotten just how much the press love Strictly until I did a quick google search this morning and discovered a ridiculous number of articles. I guess there’s a risk of Strictly news overload in the coming months, particularly if you read any of the tabloid newspapers.

To try and make your life easier, I’ve highlighted (and provided the link for) just seven articles that might be of interest.

Strictly Come Dancing Betting Odds

This year’s couples have now been announced and as you would expect, the bookies are alraedy taking bets on the series winner… It’s pretty interesting to see who they think will win, as over the weeks, I’d expect this to be a pretty good guide to popularity.

So, who do the bookies think is favourite?

The pairings – my initial thoughts

BBC have now announced the partnerships for the new series (you can find the list here with links to the bbc.co.uk pages for each of the couples…

I’ll be responding in full to the announcement later in the week, with my tips on who’s going to win (I don’t want to overdose on posting today!) But in the meantime, I thought I’d share the first thoughts that came into my mind when looking at the list…

The Sun was right – Strictly celebrities announced

So, it appears that the BBC did spring a leak, as the BBC has announced the celebrities competing in the new series of Strictly Come Dancing, and it matches that reported by The Sun back on the weekend. You can now see the news article on the BBC’s own website here.

Strictly Come Dancing 2008 celebrities

For my reaction, check out the article that I wrote on the weekend.

‘Dancing with the Stars’ and ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ – the same celebrity fixer rulebook?

A conveniently timed announcement from ABC confirms the celebrity contestants in the US version of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ which is also scheduled to start within a week of the UK series.

Personally I’ve never watched the US version (even the presence of Scary Spice in the last series wasn’t enough to convince me!), but I was keen to see if I even recognised the names in the US version… I guess it’s not hugely surprising to discover that I don’t!

However, the celebrity-fixer in the US obviously has the same rulebook as the UK fixed, judging by the picks, which don’t appear so different…

Len Goodman’s autobiography released tomorrow

Len Goodman’s autobiography, entitled Better Late Than Never is released tomorrow, but the highlights are already available to anyone willing to suffer the miserable experience that is reading The Daily Mail. Thankfully an interview and two artciles (so far) are also freely available on the Mail’s website (see links later in this article).

What happened to Teddy Sheringham?

When The Sun wrote about the alleged list of celebrities in this year’s Strictly, there was one notable ommission - Teddy Sheringham. So what happened?

Who’s taking part in Strictly 2008?

According to an article in yesterday’s paper, The Sun seems to think that it knows who this year’s contestants … and whilst these names aren’t yet confirmed, a number of these names have also been reported elsewhere, so there’s a good chance that many of them are right. The official announcement is due on 28th August, and will be published on the show’s official website.

This year’s series of Strictly is going to be even longer, which mean even more celebrities. In case you’re wondering, here are the 16 contestants (in alphabetical order).