On Strictly Come Dancing this week Tom and Camilla danced an energetic Jive and a beautiful Argentine Tango, but failed to find favour with the judges. When the phone lines opened they were left standing at the bottom of the judges’ score board.
Tom & Camilla’s Jive
double click on video to see in wide screen
However, with a change to the advertised structure all three couples in the semi-finals are to go through to next Saturday’s final without a dance off. At the start of this evening’s results show it was announced that the lines were being frozen, and at the end we were told that all the couples were through and this evening’s votes are being carried forward to next week.
With John Sergeant leaving the competition, there was the problem that the final would only have two couples. Also with three couples in the semi-final, the tying of Rachel & Vincent with Brendan & Lisa for first place on the judges’ scores meant that, no matter what the public vote, Tom & Camilla could not escape any dance off.
Tom & Camilla’s Argentine Tango
double click on video to see in wide screen
Whether the format of the Show was altered so that next week will be better TV, or to give the public an equal say in Tom & Camilla’s fate, or both, we undoubtedly will have a nail biting final. Presumably all will be explained on ‘It Takes Two‘ in the week, but whatever the reasons congratulations to Tom & Camilla.
PARWICH.ORG 
I’ve just got back from The Sycamore, which was in UPROAR with delight at tonight’s shock result. An hour ago, with a dance-off seemingly inevitable, we thought it might well have been curtains for Tom and Camilla. But now… GAME ON!!! 🙂
what an absolute farce
Strictly is all about education too;
‘Austinised’ – to be knocked out by the Latin.
‘A Mathematical Conundrum’ – the voting strategy in Strictly Come Dancing !
Stuart
Can’t we ignore last week’s vote and have Austin back for the final as well?
Live with it. Vote for Tom!
Can I join in too?
Well you weren’t voted out so I don’t see why not? 8)
Inside my befuddled, hungover brain, a penny has just dropped!
The decision to place all three couples was actually the ONLY decision that the BBC could have made, in order to avoid another phone vote scandal.
This is down to the unexpected situation on the leader board following the judges’ scores, which had Rachel & Lisa tying in first place with 3 points each, and Tom trailing with 1 point.
This meant that, no matter how many (or how few) viewers voted for Tom, their votes would have made absolutely no difference in his favour. The best that Tom could have hoped for was to win the public vote, giving him 1 + 3 = 4 points – but even in this position, he would face Rachel and Lisa on (3 + 1 =) 4 points and (3 + 2 =) 5 points. No matter which way you do the maths, Tom would definitely have been in the dance-off.
What the BBC could (or should) have done was to recognise the situation before opening the phone line. They should either have cancelled Tom’s phone line altogether, explaining to viewers that he would automatically face the dance off – or alternatively, they should have asked the judges to cast a tie break vote, in order to separate Rachel and Lisa, and then opened the lines in the normal way.
My best guess is that, in the heat of the moment, nobody at the BBC thought this through, and so their eventual decision was down to simple crisis management. They simply could not have afforded the scandal of receiving money from phone voters under false pretences.
The final bit of evidence for my “panic” theory is the way that the programme ended well short of its advertised finishing time, leaving the BBC to fill the gap with numerous trailers.
Over on the Digital Spy forums, they’ve been running a poll as to whether the BBC made the right decision. (Click here.) 73% (436) agree, and 27% (166) disagree. This row could rumble on for days!
Oh, and there’s one more thing – and this might not be such good news for Tom and Camilla. In order to avoid a further “wasted vote” scandal, the BBC have had to “roll over” all of last night’s telephone votes towards next week’s result (which I believe is purely down to public votes, and not the judges’ scores).
Now, I don’t know how many Tom fans out there in TV-land were doing the maths, but down in The Sycamore we quickly worked out that there was no point in voting for Tom – so none of us did.
(In fact, I found myself arguing that we should vote tactically for Rachel, as I thought Tom and Camilla would have a much harder job surviving a dance-off against her and Vincent!)
If a large number of Tom fans made the same calculation as we did, then Tom’s phone vote total could have ended up much lower than usual, thus placing him at an immediate disadvantage for next week. (This makes voting for him next week all the more important, of course.)
Short version: I agree with Rupert – it’s an absolute farce! But quite an entertaining one!
Even though this involves the embarrassing admission that I have voted in previous weeks, I too did not vote this week as it was obvious that a vote for Tom could have no effect on the results.
The News on the Strictly Come Dancing website does not add any further information, it just says:
Appreciate all the comments, spot on, its like a game of chess , a move was made and then the next move puts the game in Check Mate. Just what happened here, but some games allow the chance to start again so all three couples are still there. I hope it will be an entertaining conclusion.
Here is the BBC’s Official statement on how they plan to deal with the confusion ensuing from Saturday’s situation:
OK, so this means that Tom and Camilla have an even tougher job on Saturday night.
The best they can hope for at the start of the show (i.e. before the dancing begins) is joint second place, trailing by one point.
But if last week’s tele-voters decided en masse that there was no point in voting for Tom, then he could theoretically start the show with just two points, trailing the two girls on six points and five points. Fingers crossed that this doesn’t happen!