‘Donkey’ Tony Adams is no ass – he’s boring Strictly’s best asset
TO watch Tony Adams dancing with Katya Jones is to be reminded of nothing so elegant as watching Tony attempting to man mark Marco van Basten at the 1988 European Championships.
Four left hooves wasn’t the half of it that day.
The Dusseldorf fire brigade needed three days just to untangle Tony after the Dutchman had finished with him.
And it’s a similar story on Strictly Come Dancing.
Tony turns around to grab Katya? There she isn’t.
He swivels 180 degrees to correct himself? She’s gone again.
READ MORE ON STRICTLY
Week one, he did it tangoing to the old Go West chant.
Week two, it was a My Old Man’s A Dustman Charleston that looked more like The BFG had forgotten to take his inhibitors.
Neither left three of the judges with much room for polite manoeuvre, but another thing I like about Tony is the way Shirley Ballas always addresses him in the same sort of way she’d speak to one of the ungulates at Whipsnade Zoo: “You have a lovely long neck, don’t you.”
Plain rubbish
This affection is not reflected in the big fella’s scores, obviously.
He’s been bottom of the judging heap with both dances.
However, I’d like to think Tony takes comfort from knowing that he is by far the best thing about this series of Strictly Come Dancing, which is down about a million viewers on the 2021 run.
“Too woke” is the accusation that’s come from elsewhere. A safe and easy enough claim to make about 99 per cent of the BBC’s output these days.
Most read in The Sun
But I actually think it lets them off the hook a bit, as the wider truth about this year’s line-up is that it’s lazy, predictable and just plain rubbish.
It’s also so anonymous that, despite watching TV in a (no sniggering, please) professional capacity for over ten hours a day, these past 22 years, I have genuinely never set eyes on Tyler West, Molly Rainford or Hamza Yassin before.
Others I do recognise, obviously, but they either come with a shrug, like Will Mellor, James Bye and Kaye Adams, or a suggestion they already have an unfair level of dance experience, like Fleur East, Kym Marsh and Helen Skelton.
Into this category, mind you, I’d have also lumped Matt Goss, until his Saturday Night Dengue Fever routine confirmed he has not a whiff of a suggestion of a hint of rhythm in his body and is using the classic “hair dye distraction” technique to draw us away from the obvious conclusion.
You can perhaps understand, then, why some people have fixated on the woke element, targeting among others Ellie Simmonds, who’s partnered by Nikita Kuzmin, and Karen Hauer, who’s in a same-sex partnership with HMS Jayde Adams.
The one whose face seems to have drawn the really short straw, however, is Giovanni Pernice, who looks horrified to find himself lumbered with the Aardman animated figure of Richie Anderson, whose capacity to irritate can probably best be gauged by the number of times he’s flattered with the E-word.
Motsi: “You’re the personification of energy.”
Giovanni: “I’ve never met someone with so much energy.”
Shirley: “So fun, so energetic. Richie’s a ball of fire. He’s also light on his feet.”
He is indeed, Shirley. Very light.
This intriguing culture clash, between a heterosexual Sicilian male and the BBC’s woke values, however, is not really enough to hook me in on a Saturday night.
Nor do I give the remotest toss about fleckerls, box turns, heel steps or any of the other elements that make up the sacred “dance journey” on which some of the couples are embarking.
For, hard as the Strictly-obsessed BBC will find it to believe, in the absence of laughs anywhere else on TV, there are those of us who just long to see it all go a bit wrong.
That’s why I’m so smitten with Tony Adams, who rounded off Saturday’s Charleston with a windmill lift that nearly put Katya in Stoke Mandeville and a question for Claudia Winkleman: “Was that rubbish?”
In technical terms, yes, Tony.
But in all the ways that really matter, no, no no.
Unexpected morons in bagging area
THE Chase, Bradley Walsh: “The YouTube channel Big Jet TV live streams footage of what vehicles landing?”
Jacob: “Jet skis.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “Equestrian Life is a magazine for riders and lovers of which animal?”
Saleem: “Dog.”
And Ben Shephard: “Which 20th-century Soviet leader is often referred to as ‘Uncle Joe’?”
Darrel: “Joe Pasquale.”
Random TV irritations
THE crushing irony of Make Me Prime Minister contestants being told they’ve had a “bad idea” by Alastair Campbell, architect of the Iraq War.
Kenneth Branagh looking more like a stooge in an Ant & Dec hidden camera stunt than Boris Johnson on Sky Atlantic’s deeply disappointing This England drama.
BBC1’s Unbreakable winning the 2022 Monkey Tennis award for its bungee-jumping with Simon Weston segment.
And Have I Got News For You hypocrite Ian Hislop lambasting hedge- fund manager Crispin Odey on the grounds: “He talks the country down and takes the money.”
As opposed to Britain’s great cheerleader Ian Hislop, who never stops waving the flag and does it all for free, presumably?
Beeb's a spoil sport
THE front line of the BBC’s war against its own audience remains the once mighty A Question Of Sport, which regularly pulled in nearly five million viewers when it was fronted by Sue Barker, Phil Tufnell and Matt Dawson.
A happy arrangement but one that clearly made it too popular, old and white for the Beeb’s woke zealots, so they sacked all the regulars, replaced Sue with the horribly miscast Paddy McGuinness, brought in Sam Quek and Ugo Monye as captains and changed the format.
What happened next?
Several million viewers vanished and there were just 750,000 hardy souls left, come August.
A pitifully low number, but it was clearly still too many for the BBC cultists, so, on Friday, they broadcast an LGBTQ+ special edition, “in celebration of Pride’s 50th anniversary”, complete with the compulsory rainbow flag logos and questions from “elite sportsmen” like Dr Ranj off This Morning and DJ Scott Mills.
Not something it’s ever bothered doing for any other charity.
And they should probably be grateful to avoid the show’s attention, because Friday’s politically driven move should successfully rid AQOS of its last few ideologically impure viewers (or anyone just expecting an innocent laugh) and take this once-loved show below the 500,000 mark, where it’ll probably be beyond the point of no return.
Nice work, morons.
'Nice little pocket'
MEANWHILE, on Labiaplasty Live, one of the cosmetic surgeons explained: “The rest of the stuffing is a mixture of wool fibres and all sorts of things, but I’ve made a nice little pocket so I can pop my growler in like that.”
Actually, I tell a lie. It was an antique bear restorer on The Repair Shop, but I wish her a swift recovery.
Lookalike of the week
THIS week’s winner is Strictly nuisance Richie Anderson and Sanjay from The Fairly Odd Parents. Sent in by Michele McGuire.
Picture research: AMY READING
Great sporting insights
LEE HENDRIE: “Today, the inevitable might happen.”
Conor McNamara: “The expression is about London buses coming at once. He scored one and was away like a train.” Sir Steve Clarke: “As always it’s only the one position where injuries are targeted and that’s in defence. We’ve lost a few forwards as well.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
You're nicked
MAKE Me Prime Minister. Eco-loon Caroline Thomson-Smith: “I often tell the police I’m far too pretty to be arrested.”
Caroline. You’re nicked.
TV Gold
HONOURABLE mentions for Episode four of Disney + drama The Bear, Storyville’s One Day In Ukraine and Dolly Wells doing her brilliant best to rescue Inside Man from itself.
But the most exhilarating show on television is BBC2’s flawed masterpiece Industry, which has overdone the City jargon this series, but is elevated by the sublime young cast, led by Myha’la Herrold, the spot-on cultural references and the best character name this side of ’Allo ’Allo.
Pierpoint’s sexually adventurous French head of Private Wealth Management, Celeste Pacquet. What a show.
Delusions of the week
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the week. BBC1 continuity announcer:
“When we really need something to smile about, he’s here. Romesh Ranganathan.”
DNA Journey, Kate Garraway: “Oh my God, this is just insanely exciting.”
Strictly Come Dancing, Giovanni Pernice on being paired with Richie Anderson: “I’m very genuinely, genuinely happy.”
He’s very genuinely, genuinely not.
ELSEWHERE, ITV has devised a deeply patronising quiz called Sorry, I Didn’t Know that’s designed to show the “racist herd” how little they understand black culture, history and geography.
For instance, host Jimmy Akingbola: “What is Africa’s highest mountain?”
Verona Rose: “Mount Everest.”
Thank you, ITV. Knowledge is power.
Read More on The Sun
Read More on The Sun
BAD enough that I’ve watched BBC1 celebrity challenge Unbreakable twice and still can not detect a point or a purpose.
Worse still that Pimlico Plumbers boss Charlie Mullins never bought out a rival company so he could be restyled as Dynorod Stewart. But the fact that his delightful, young girlfriend RaRa was invited to sing and didn’t do Boney M’s Rasputin? Well that’s just unforgivable, isn’t it.