Strictly Come Dancing: a fabulous finale

It's time to pack away the sequins as last night saw the end of the latest series of "Strictly Come Dancing", which is such a successful formula you can see it going on for ever, as long as there are enough willing actors/sports people/TV presenters to take part!

From the beginning of this series it looked as if the girls were going to get their revenge after two male winners. But it all didn't go according to plan, what with Gabby Logan's early and unexpected eviction and Kelly Brook leaving the show after a family bereavement. In every series, there is also one inexplicable occurrence of a bad contestant being kept in week after week: this time it was the breakfast TV presenter Kate Garraway, who defined the phrase "two left feet" - poor Anton! Give him someone good for a change next year eh?

The standout female contestant from the beginning was Alesha Dixon, former member of short-lived girl band Mis-Teeq, whose bubbly personality, glamour and dancing talent made her a favourite with the judges and viewers alike (but still shockingly ended in the bottom two a couple of weeks ago!)

Matt Di Angelo (who along with Leticia Dean apparently fulfils the series' annual quota of Eastenders actors past and present) also impressed us from the beginning, although famously forgot his steps the other week and could have left the contest for that mistake.

Although he came third, we didn't really take to Blue Peter's Gethin Jones, who became the viewers' pin-up (we prefer Matt actually with his twinkly blue eyes and cute smile....aah.)

Anyway I digress. Last night's final was, for once, more evenly matched than any that we can remember, and was therefore very enjoyable indeed. Apart from Ms foot-in-mouth Tess Daly, whose interview technique is almost as embarrassing as her dress sense.

Both couples did very well indeed in all their dances, special mention to Matt and Flavia's exciting salsa to "I'm Your Vehicle Baby", Matt was quite hot (not as hot as "Hot Hot Hot" but hot nonetheless, oh I'm getting a bit silly now :0))).

No question that Alesha is great, but we've never really been that keen on her partner Matthew Cutler, who always seems a bit sourfaced IMHO.

Anyway congratulations to Alesha, who was a worthy winner of another great series.

However.

This series of "Strictly" was spoiled by a couple of things: a format change which saw the results show being moved to a Sunday night - and having to avoid reading the spoilers on a Saturday night.

And don't even start me on the other format change, which gave the already power-mad judges the responsibility of saving/evicting a couple every week, rather than the couple with the lowest votes being evicted. If there's been one annoying thing about this series - or should I say four - it's been the judges' panel, who seem to think, X Factor-style, that they are more important than the contestants.

If the BBC has any sense it will bring back the Saturday night results show, and shut those judges up for good. We can dream!

Already looking forward to next year's series - but in the meantime there's another series of "Let's Dance" starting on 11th January on TV4, in which Danny Saucedo and a number of other Swedish celebs will be hitting the dancefloor. I'll be posting a review here every week.