Pro-celebrity ballroom is 90% inspiration and 10% perspective

Perspective: not a word you often hear in and around the pro-celebrity ballroom dancing circuit. Yet it was rightly, and generously, applied by Matt Dawson in the immediate wake of his defeat by Mark Ramprakash in the final of Strictly Come Dancing. “Let’s get this in perspective,” Dawson said when the phone votes had been counted. “The real dancer,” Dawson went on, had won.
Were truer words ever spoken in a programme involving Bruce Forsyth? And was justice ever more clearly done? Coming so soon after Leona’s victory over Ray in The X Factor, it seemed to confirm a new dawn for challenge television and the integrity of its electoral procedures. (In the event that the London-based diva had lost out to the baby-faced and, frankly, flat Liverpudlian, many of us had vowed to swear off televised talent contests for ever. And then what would we have done with our lives?)
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Perspective. You felt it had been honoured again when Colin Jackson snatched the Strictly Come Dancing champion of champions contest on Christmas Day. True, this gala-style add-on is some way south of the grandeur and significance of the main competition. Yes, it brings together some of the top couples from the contest’s recent history in a glory-or-bust dance-off, but it has an underpowered, second-hand air about it. It’s a bit like European football’s Super Cup in this respect. You feel it ought to mean more.
Still, Jackson took the trophy. And what a trophy — a big silver star on a stick. I’d hazard a guess there is nothing like it on Jackson’s mantelpiece. Or on anyone else’s, with the possible exception of Sir Elton John’s.
For the former sprint hurdler, it was consolation for his disappointment on the big stage a year ago. Jackson — very much the Ramprakash of the previous series — had carried his flag towards light entertainment’s summit, only to see the mildly implausible figure of Darren Gough nudge him aside on the final ascent.
Of course, to a certain extent, Jackson and his partner only had themselves to blame on that occasion. And, accordingly, what a pleasure it was this Christmas to see him dance unimpeded by the puppet that played havoc with his routine last time out.
One’s head still shakes in bewilderment to reflect that Jackson and his partner, with the title all but in their grasp, chose to dance with mannequins rather than each other. The boundaries are there to be pushed, obviously, but this was an act of post-modernism too far.
Still, Jackson, Gough, Dawson, Ramprakash, Roger Black, Denise Lewis . . . you’ll spot the connection linking the contestants at the Strictly Come Dancing sharp end in the past few years of competition. It’s almost worrying, the extent to which the format leans on these people. If sport ever collapsed, what would become of pro-celebrity ballroom?
Pro-celebrity quiz shows, however, would probably survive. It’s not a big arena for the outgoing sports star, the Celebrity Mastermind selectors tending to favour instead the likes of Clare Balding, the BBC horse racing presenter. Who was utterly brilliant the other night, by the way. Her specialist subject in “the infamous black chair” was the Derby from 1970 to 2000. Winning horses, horses that didn’t win, names of trainers, lengths by which victories were achieved — you name it, Balding was on it.
She even rode hard through the general knowledge section, although it may be some time before one forgives her entirely for crediting Stevie Wonder’s immortal My Cherie Amour to Sacha Distel. All this, however, only to have victory snatched away from her by one point at the death by some bloke from Brookside. Ah, well. She’ll be back.
Christmas Day normally finds Sky Sports 1 looking about as ritzy and festive as downtown Kabul. It is never the easiest period for any channel whose backbone is live sport. Which perhaps explains the Christmas night offering of a Tribute on Ice to Michael Bolton.
I’m not making this up. At one end of an ice rink in Connecticut sat the formerly mulleted popular singer, running through his scenery-chewing versions of some luckless soul classics. And in front of him, stars of world ice dancing took it in turns to give it some triple salchow in his honour.
They went together like . . . well, like Michael Bolton and ice skating, I suppose. All I would offer, by way of a general comment, is this: if a Tribute on Ice to Michael Bolton is possible, can a Tribute on Ice to Peter Andre be far behind?
Five used Christmas to pose the festive question, David Icke: Was He Right? In other words, was the former Coventry City goalkeeper and BBC sports correspondent correct to claim, in 15 years of books and talks composed on the Isle of Wight, that politicians and royalty are an interbreeding front for evil reptilian creatures that are manipulating the world?
There was no phone vote at the end of David Icke: Was He Right? But my sense is that people would probably have gone for “no”. Perspective, you see. It’s the new rage.