Forget Anton Du Beke, Strictly Come Dancing is BBC disaster zone

Oct 11 2009 by Lorne Jackson, Sunday Mercury

I’VE always thought Anton du Beke was more of an Anton du Ready Brek.

But instead of having a red glow of cosy warmth enfolding him, like the kids in the 1970s cereal adverts, Anton is surrounded by an almost visible shimmer of stupidity.

Anybody who thinks you can’t spot a dummy by merely looking one in the face should train their peepers on the professional prancer from Strictly Come Dancing.

The phrase ‘the lights are on but nobody’s home’ doesn’t apply to Du Ready Brek.

With him, the lights are on, but the legal tenants have done a midnight flit, leaving a bunch of squatters to take up residence.

All self-respecting estate agents have washed their hands of the dump, and pulled up the ‘For Sale’ sign in the weed-strewn garden.

Anton’s not much of a talker, either, as anyone will testify who has watched him on Strictly.

He brings to the art of conversation what the spinning bow tie and water-squirting flower in the buttonhole brought to alternative comedy.

So it should come as no surprise to learn that Anton du Ready Brek has shamed himself, while also dragging Strictly Come Dancing out of the ballroom and into the mire, by hurling a racist epithet at his dance partner Laila Rouass.

Yet still I’m shocked.

When it comes to flexing their foolishness in public, dopes are always ready and willing to explore new avenues of dunderheadedness. To dream the undreamable dream, and boldly go where no bumpkin has gone before.

Screwed up

Anton screwed up, big time, and I doubt he’ll be invited on the next series of Strictly.

Any chance he had of replacing Jeremy Paxman as the lead anchor on Newsnight is also dead in the water, although perhaps he still holds out hope of replacing Huw Edwards on The Ten O’Clock News.

But forget Anton.

That’s what the BBC are planning to do, after all.

There’s another casualty, bigger than Du Beke – and that’s Strictly Come Dancing itself.

The show is a favourite child of the great and the good at the BBC.

And not only because it’s popular with Saturday night audiences, or that it has become one shuddering udder of a cash-cow for the Beeb, who sell the rights for the franchise abroad, raking in vast amounts of revenue.

Auntie loves the show because it so neatly fits the Corporation’s vision of a harmonious UK, at peace with itself.

Strictly Come Dancing is multiculturalism to a mamba beat.

All our bitter differences are dismissed while the disco lights shine bright.

In the world of Strictly there are no gaping fissures that exist between cultures, classes, age groups, religions and regions.

The never-mentioned rule is that a set number of Asian, black and white celebs must be hired for each season.

A smattering of golden oldies, too.

All in order to celebrate the balance of difference.

For a long time the judging panel was ‘hideously white’, as Greg Dyke would have described it, when he was in charge of the BBC.

Then Alesha Dixon was introduced. Not so much for her youth (and beauty) as was reported at the time.

Instead, her unique selling point is that she is of mixed-race parentage, which can only add to the beat of the multicultural mamba.

“Just look how well we all get on together!” the Beeb is boasting, in this pageant of well-meaning propaganda.

“Note how each one of us bobs round the dance floor. Not a single clash of arms and legs. No sweaty palms. No stumbling over each other’s toes. A perfect understanding of the governing music, everyone finding pleasure in the undulating rhythms of their partners.”

If only the nation could be summed up in such simplistic and optimistic terms.

But we aren’t Fred & Ginger. We are frayed and jittery.

The UK is nothing like an upmarket ballroom. it is Legs Akimbo Niteclub, situated in the less salubrious end of town.

There are bouncers on the door, but anyone is allowed in with a wink and a nod.

Drugs are sold in the toilet, while the blitzed under-age drinkers are enjoying knee-tremblers in the seediest corners of the club.

On the dance floor no-one can decide how to move and sway.

There are bumps and shoves – and somebody is going to get a kicking by the end of the night.

The management doesn’t give a damn.

Those in charge only care about the turn-over of cash at the bar.

Besides, the place is nearly bankrupt, and, who knows?

Perhaps Legs Akimbo Niteclub will ‘accidentally’ burn down one of these days, with a hefty insurance claim to follow.

And what about DJ Gordon Brown?

While all this goes on, he just plays the same tired jingle, a blunt needle trapped in a worn groove.

Maybe Anton du Beke did us all a big favor by showing us that the universe of Strictly is a leg-kicking lie.

There is no harmony at all – just murder on the dance floor.