mostly david ephgrave

So, we reach week two of Strictly and the voting starts in earnest. There were a lot of dances to get through tonight what with it being so early in the series; so much so, I reached a point about two-thirds in where I couldn’t for the life of me work out which celebrities we hadn’t seen yet. Despite being a long evening I still enjoyed myself, although this enjoyment was sullied by some of Craig and Bruno’s bitchy feedback to Susannah in particular. While I know Craig tends to work in sound bites and will usually give his negative comments first closely followed by the positive, when he only has time to say one thing, I don’t know why he’d go for something completely soul-destroying and unconstructive and often confidence shattering. Both he and Bruno are choreographers and the dance world can be an acid-tongued business, but surely with all their experience they’d know a scathing comment goes a long way toward making a non-dancer want to give up; I know I would. ...

Every Strictly Come Dancing audience member that groans after the judges give their feedback is a professional choreographer. That must be the case. How else would they have a sufficient understanding of what Craig, Darcey, Len and Bruno are about to say to boo before they’ve finished their sentence? They’re all experts. Either that, or they’ve watched too many pantos through the years. I sometimes wonder if they’ve even seen the show before. It took me minutes to spot the pattern to Craig Revel Horwood’s comments. He starts with the bad and ends with the good. It’s not hard to get to grips with. What these on-beat-clapping mouth-breathers don’t realise is you seldom get positive feedback in the performing arts industry. A director or choreographer will usually only tell you when you’ve got something wrong, not when you’ve got something right. You work at such a lick, there’s little time for affirmation. If you get no notes, you're doing well. That said, I know...