We've highlighted colloquial words and phrases, and any potentially unfamiliar cultural references, and have created a glossary at the end of the post for
There are certain TV shows in the UK which are simply part of the cycle of the seasons; they come at the same time every year and form part of the background of life for people in the UK, regardless of whether or not they actually watch the show in question. Of these, Strictly Come Dancing is probably the most famous. This celebrity Ballroom and Latin dance competition airs throughout autumn and ends a couple of weeks before Christmas: in other words, it is perfectly timed to ease us into the long dark nights of the British winter. As this would suggest, the show’s selling point is that it is pure comfort telly: familiar, reliable and unchallenging. People make slightly naff jokes, get teary-eyed over dancing to their nan’s favourite song, and whole-heartedly embrace their dancing ‘journey’. Strictly Come Dancing is, in short, the embodiment of the phrase ‘good vibes only’; this is the first thing you need to understand about the show.
The second thing you need to understand is the title. It’s a combination of two rather disparate cultural references: Come Dancing, a former BBC dance competition (not featuring celebrities) and the Australian film Strictly Ballroom (no, we’re not sure why either). However, not everyone in the UK (and especially not those too young to remember either of those things) gets these references, or questions the title. In fact, the vast majority of people just call the show Strictly.
There is also a companion programme to Strictly, featuring analysis of the previous week’s episodes, interviews with the celebrities and their dance partners, and various silly segments basically designed to fill time with the same low-stakes good vibes as the show itself. This show is called It Takes Two (from the phrase ‘it takes two to tango’, which means both parties in a given situation bear responsibility for it) and airs from Monday to Friday for the duration of a Strictly series. It is presented by Rylan Clark and professional dancer Janette Manrara (pictured above). Between this and the two weekend episodes (the main competition is broadcast live on a Saturday, with the results of the public vote and subsequent elimination of one couple broadcast the next day), there is some kind of Strictly-related content on BBC One literally every day for about three months at the end of every year. That’s how big a deal it is; it’s basically unavoidable.
The series usually begins with a launch show, in which it is revealed which professional dancer each celebrity contestant will be paired with. This gets a little bit repetitive as, one after another, a dozen pairs of people who have probably never heard of each other until a couple of weeks earlier pretend to be beside themselves with joy at the prospect of dancing together. This is Strictly’s relentless positivity at its most extreme, and if you can get through this episode without cringing then you have a stronger stomach for schmaltz than we do. By the time the couples return for the first proper episode a few weeks later, however, there is usually a genuine bond between them that makes all the screaming and hugging of the launch show seem a bit more reasonable.
Speaking of the bond between the celebrities and the professionals, there is now something of a tradition of relationships (and, indeed, affairs) developing between dance partners. This is known as the ‘Strictly curse’ because of the number of divorces and relationship breakdowns that have resulted from these dalliances. The most (in)famous example of the Strictly curse was probably when professional dancer Katya Jones was photographed snogging her celebrity partner, comedian Seann Walsh, a few weeks into the series. All of this was made more horribly awkward by the fact that Katya’s husband, Neil Jones, is also a Strictly professional, so all three parties in the love triangle had to continue working together on live television for a few weeks until Seann and Katya were eliminated. This didn’t take long: the results are based half on the judges’ scores and half on the public vote, and the public don’t generally take kindly to extra-marital canoodling among the show’s stars.
While the kind of media attention that surrounds the Strictly curse is not exactly welcomed by the show’s stars, it is nonetheless an unspoken truth that part of the point of appearing on Strictly from the celebrities’ perspective is precisely the attention that it brings. As with most TV shows that feature celebrities, Strictly does not exactly draw its contestants from the upper echelons of UK showbiz; rather, the show usually features a motley crew of soap actors, newsreaders and athletes (as well as, more recently, at least one influencer or YouTuber, presumably in order to appeal to Gen Z). This means that appearing on Strictly can be a bit of a career boost for the celebs; they might not have Hollywood agents knocking on their door off the back of their performance on the show, but for more than one contestant, Strictly has been the beginning of a West End stage career. At the very least (with a few exceptions), they’re guaranteed to win the affection of the viewing public, something which never hurt anyone’s career prospects.
While the celebrity cast changes every year, there are a few stalwarts among the presenters, judges, and professional dancers who have been on Strictly since it started 20 years ago. These are presenter Tess Daly, judge Craig Revel Horwood, and professional-turned-judge Anton Du Beke (real name Tony Beak. No, really.)
For the first 11 years, Tess Daly presented the show alongside Bruce Forsyth, a beloved veteran presenter who made his name in the 1950s and was known for hosting gameshows. It’s hard to overstate the extent to which the show revolved around Forsyth in the early years; he would use his call-and-response catchphrases from the 1970s on the studio audience (who, in fairness, always responded enthusiastically), and even occasionally did his own song-and-dance numbers during the show. Already in his 70s when the show started, Brucie (as he was affectionately known) could be a bit of a liability on live TV, and Tess’s main job was basically to wrangle him. When he was replaced by Claudia Winkleman (who had previously presented It Takes Two), the dynamic shifted slightly, but essentially Tess is still there as a kind of foil to her zany co-host. If this sounds like damning with faint praise, it isn’t; Tess’s maternal vibe and professionalism set the tone for the show and basically hold the whole thing together.
If Tess is the mum of the Strictly family, then longest-serving judge Craig Revel Horwood is more of a wicked stepmother (if only in a panto kind of way). Craig is the only survivor of the original judges’ panel, the line-up having undergone many changes. The most controversial of these was when 66-year-old choreographer Arlene Philips was replaced by 30-year-old singer (and winner of the previous series of Strictly) Alesha Dixon, sparking accusations of ageism. Craig has remained a constant against this backdrop, playing the role of the harsh, unsentimental judge (though he has softened noticeably in recent years). He is known for his drawling pronunciation of the long A sound in words like ‘darling’ and ‘disaster’ (two of his favourites), and the way he says ‘cha cha cha’ is truly something to behold. It’s hard to explain the precise cultural connotations of Craig’s accent, a camp exaggeration of RP that marks him out as someone with both a theatrical background and a sharp tongue. Admittedly, that’s a lot of cultural weight for a single vowel sound to carry – welcome to the UK!
At the other end of the judging panel from Craig is Anton Du Beke (pictured left), who started out as one of the original professional dancers on the show. Before he became a judge, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Anton was considerably older than the rest of the professional dancers, and this perhaps contributed to the fact that he was often paired with whichever celebrity in a given year seemed to have the least natural dance ability. As a judge, Anton seems like the reincarnation of former head judge Len Goodman, as both men have a slightly old-school, Cockney-inflected turn of phrase: Len Goodman’s catchphrase was ‘I’ll pickle me walnuts’ (as in, ‘If you’re not in the final, I’ll pickle me walnuts’, a sort of East End twist on ‘I’ll eat my hat’), while Anton has a habit of addressing people as ‘me old sausage’.
The old-fashioned note struck by Anton and Len’s use of language is an indicator of another important strand to Strictly’s popular appeal. For all its attempts to court Gen Z with TikTok-friendly celebs and CGI-enhanced dance sequences, there is an extremely British (or perhaps English) brand of nostalgia at the show’s core. This is encapsulated in the role played by Blackpool in the show. About halfway through the series, Strictly moves from Elstree Studios in London to the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool. As the name suggests, this is a ballroom inside Blackpool Tower, the iconic attraction at the heart of the UK’s most famous seaside town. The reason for Strictly’s relationship with Blackpool is that the town has historically been – and remains – very significant in the world of ballroom dancing, often hosting international competitions; the Tower Ballroom was also the venue for Come Dancing. However, Blackpool has a broader significance in British culture. Before air travel became widely affordable, normalising foreign holidays for even working-class UK families, British seaside towns were extremely popular holiday destinations, and Blackpool, with its tower and its ‘Illuminations’ (the extravagant displays of light that cover the town centre for the whole of late summer and autumn) became particularly iconic among them. The golden age of Blackpool is long gone, and it is now quite a deprived area, though people do still go on holiday there (including one half of Not the Queen's English, who visited regularly from Scotland as a child in the 2000s). Strictly’s annual visit to Blackpool therefore invokes both the glamour and the relative innocence of a bygone age when a holiday to a chilly Northern beach seemed like the thrill of a lifetime…
Strictly season is upon us, which means that our Saturday and Sunday nights are booked up for the next three months. We’re buzzing!
Glossary
selling point
A quality or feature that makes something appealing to consumers (can be used literally or
figuratively).
naff
Of poor quality or showing bad taste. A naff joke is obvious or unfunny, not ‘poor taste’ in the sense of being offensive or tactless.
teary-eyed
Having eyes that are wet with tears.
nan
Grandmother
low-stakes
Inconsequential; not serious.
BBC One
One of several BBC channels. BBC One is, in a sense, the ‘main’ channel, on which the BBC’s biggest shows are broadcast.
beside themselves with joy
Extremely happy.
schmaltz
Excessive sentimentality. This word is probably more common in the USA, but we use it here too.
dalliances
An old-fashioned word for casual romantic or sexual relationships, which is still used for comic effect.
snogging
Kissing passionately.
love triangle
A romantic situation involving three people, usually two people in love with the same person, or a couple where one partner is having an affair. We wouldn’t use this term for a polyamorous relationship between three people.
take kindly to
Appreciate; like.
canoodling
Another old-fashioned word for sexual activity, still used for comic effect.
upper echelons
High levels or ranks.
showbiz
Show business (that is, the entertainment industry).
motley crew
A group of dissimilar people.
celebs
A common abbreviation of ‘celebrities’.
off the back of
An informal way of saying ‘due to’ or ‘as a result of’.
West End
The part of London famous for its theatres (basically the UK equivalent of Broadway).
stalwarts
People who have been members of a particular team or organisation (et cetera) for a very long time.
veteran
We use this as an adjective in order to say that someone has been doing a particular job for a very long time.
call-and-response catchphrases
This is not a set phrase (though call-and-response is). It refers to the fact that Bruce Forsyth’s
catchphrases usually involved some sort of response from the audience. Most famously, he would shout ‘It’s nice to see you, to see you…!’ to which the audience would respond in unison: ‘Nice!’ (Don’t ask; it doesn’t make sense to us either).
song-and-dance numbers
In this context, ‘number’ means routine or performance.
liability
Someone likely to cause problems with their unpredictable behaviour or incompetence.
wrangle
Keep under control. This is usually used about animals in a literal, physical sense, but can be used figuratively for comic effect.
foil
Someone or something that contrasts with something else in order to emphasise certain qualities in the latter.
zany
Eccentric; slightly crazy in a fun way.
damning with faint praise
This is a set phrase that refers to the act of (perhaps unintentionally) criticising something by
praising it in a way that is not particularly enthusiastic.
wicked stepmother
A stock character in fairy tales. The phrase has become part of everyday speech.
panto
Pantomime, a traditional form of comic theatre performed around Christmas time in the UK. The storylines are often drawn from fairy tales, so a wicked stepmother character is often featured. Craig Revel Horwood has appeared in drag in numerous pantomimes.
drawling
Speaking in a deliberately slow and drawn-out manner.
something to behold
Impressive; unbelievable.
RP
Received Pronunciation: the ‘standard’ variety of British English, associated with educated, middle-class speakers from South East England.
sharp tongue
Someone who has a sharp tongue often makes cruelly honest or blunt remarks.
old-school
Old-fashioned.
turn of phrase
An expression. A person’s turn of phrase is their style of speaking — their use of language and choice of words.
East End
The part of London traditionally associated with the Cockney accent.
I’ll eat my hat
A slightly old-fashioned expression used to imply that you don’t believe something to be possible or likely.
Blackpool Illuminations
Parents are often heard to say ‘It’s like the Blackpool Illuminations in here!’ when their children forget to switch off the lights in an empty room.
a bygone age
A set phrase meaning a long time ago; an era or period which is now over.
thrill of a lifetime
Another set phrase, used to refer to something so exciting that it is likely to be remembered by those involved for a long time.
buzzing
Excited; pleased
