Shirley Ballas has admitted that she has had her fair share of sleepless nights after this year’s season of Strictly took an unexpected turn when Lewis Cope was eliminated
Shirley Ballas says she didn’t sleep all night after Lewis Cope was axed from this year’s season of Strictly(Image: BBC)
Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas has admitted she was left wide awake all night after Lewis Cope’s emotional exit from the competition.
While on BBC spin-off show It Takes Two, Shirley opened up to host Fleur East about the toll this stage of the competition has taken on her, especially as the remaining couples edge closer to the final.
When Fleur asked how she was feeling with the semi-final less than 24 hours away, Shirley replied sombrely: “Well I didn’t sleep yesterday, I didn’t sleep when Lewis got eliminated and I probably won’t sleep tonight because you never know where the show is going to go at the moment.”
She went on to explain just how unpredictable this year’s contest has become, adding: “It is not set and it could be anyone who goes home and anyone who can win, so it will be very interesting tomorrow.”
Lewis, who is best known to viewers for his role on Emmerdale, was eliminated last week after going head-to-head with Love Island star Amber Davies in the dreaded dance-off.
Many fans were devastated to see him leave just before the semi-finals. But Lewis spoke fondly of his time on Strictly after his exit, saying: “It’s been more than I could have ever wished for. If someone would have said that I’d have done 11 weeks on the show at the beginning, I’d have been over the moon and snap their hand off.”
He went on to thank the show and his professional partner Katya Jones, telling her: “You’ve literally given me absolutely everything I could wish for as a friend, as a teacher, and yeah, I couldn’t imagine it with anybody else.”
An emotional Katya returned the praise, calling Lewis one of the most memorable contestants the show has seen. “You will be remembered as one of, if not, the best male celebrity we’ve ever had on the show,” she said, adding that he would also be remembered for being “an incredible person”.
Away from the ballroom, Lewis’s girlfriend Rachel Lopez also spoke out following his exit, hitting back at viewers’ claims that he had an unfair advantage due to his musical theatre background.
In a heartfelt Instagram post, she wrote: “What most people never saw was the pressure you carried, especially with people assuming you would walk in as a trained dancer (which you absolutely weren’t!).”
Rachel praised Lewis for handling the criticism he received with grace, adding: “The heartbreak isn’t a sign you have failed, it just shows how much courage you had.”
On It Takes Two Shirley went on to offer some quick advice to the remaining couples ahead of the semi-final, encouraging Amber and Nikita to “bend knees and have a lot of fun,” while calling for more “connection and partnering” from some of the other contestants.
Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman have announced that they will quit the series at the end of the current run, with replacements being sought by the BBC from January
Claudia and Tess are off, and it could be good for the future of the show(Image: BBC)
Internet star George Clarke has made it to the quarter finals of Strictly Come Dancing and is happy to admit he has no idea how it’s all gone so well. But if he does make it to the grand finale on December 20, he’ll witness presenters Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman bowing out of the series for good, which is bound to be an emotional occasion.
And while he doesn’t have any idea who might be drafted in to replace them, he thinks that freshening the hosting line-up can only be good news for the long-running show, which has aired on BBC One since 2004.
“I honestly have not got a Scooby,” he chortles when asked who he’d like to see as their replacements. “They’re big shoes to fill, but actually, I don’t think it should be about trying to fill shoes. It’s just a way to put a new lease of life into the show.”
When it comes to his own journey over the past 11 weeks, he’s pinching himself to find that he’s still in the competition. “I don’t think any of us expected it,” he admits. “It’s still a surprise to me that the judges pull up paddles any higher than five,” he laughs. “I’m very happy and appreciate the compliments and stuff, but I don’t think I’ll ever be in a place where I’m like, ‘I can dance’.”
The 26-year-old, from Bristol, is so naturally modest, he can’t compute that he’s not only proving himself on the dance floor – scoring 39 for his samba in Blackpool – he’s also inspiring huge swathes of the audience to vote for him every week.
The rumour is that George and his pro partner Alexis Warr are topping the phone vote every week, and the bookies now have Strictly as a two-horse race between him and footballer Karen Carney. But he is still wondering whether he’s going to remember the steps each week. “People ask me ‘Did you know you were gonna be good?’ and my brain is still ‘I don’t dance, what are you on about?’”
Tomorrow they will attempt to get through musical week to next week’s semi-final – alongside fellow contestants Karen, Balvinder Sopal, Lewis Cope and Amber Davies.
George has already admitted to presenter Claudia Winkleman that he is no fan of musical theatre. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually been to a proper musical,” he says now. “I feel like the musicals I hated are the ones I’ve been conned into thinking are just a regular film, and then suddenly they break out into song. And I’m sat there wondering why they’re singing about running out of milk or something,” he laughs. “It seems really unnecessary.”
Despite this, he has had fun learning the deadly serious Argentine Tango, which he and Alexis, 25, will perform to The Point of No Return from Phantom of the Opera.
“It’s very technical. It’s very different, but I’m quite enjoying it,” George says, seeming a bit surprised. “It feels like it very much goes hand in hand with what the Phantom of the Opera is – or what I’ve been told it is! Just the whole sort of back and forth between them.”
He’s hoping that he can keep his confidence and concentration going strong. “There’s honestly no telling of how well things will go, cause I feel that is very much dependent on whether I get in my head on the night,” he explains. “If that happens, I tend to tell the judges that I made 18 mistakes, and they take that into account with the scoring.”
American Alexis, who only joined the show this year, is delighted with the warm welcome she’s received from the British public. She is a bit more pragmatic when it comes to eyeing up the glitterball trophy. “I feel like everyone wants to win, it would be nice, obviously. But we don’t want that to be the sole focus or what drives us,” she explains.
George, who still suffers nerves even now that they’ve reached week 11, is determined not to think about the final or the prospect of winning. “I feel like the only strategy I want is to dance as well as we can, which is what we’ve been doing the whole time. It’s never really gone further than trying to be ourselves and enjoy it – it’s not ‘let’s get our hands on that glitterball!’
“But if people get behind that and that we end up with it in our hands, then that’s a really cool side effect, I guess.”
He still says that the dance that meant the most to him in the whole competition was the rumba he did last month, which was dedicated to his family and particularly his mother, who was diagnosed with the brain inflammation condition encephalitis a decade ago and has more recently been battling cancer.
It only got 29 points from the judges, but to him it was a triumph. “It’s one of the dances that I’m happiest with, despite the fact that I know there was so much I could have done better,” he explains. They danced to Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know, which was the only song he put forward at the start of the series, because it means so much to his family and was sung at his grandfather’s funeral by his sister.
In his head, and as an ambassador for the Charing Encephalitis International, he knew he wanted to tell the story of his mother’s illness. “It wasn’t ‘woe is me, I’ve had such a horrible experience’, it was much more that it is such an unknown disease,” he explains. “The only people that tend to know about it are doctors and people that it has affected. So it felt like a good time as any to say something about it and to spread awareness.”
Afterwards, his Dad couldn’t believe he’d done it. “He said ‘I dunno why you put so much pressure on yourself – you’ve already got live TV and a dance that you’re not used to.’” George was thrilled when his Mum and Dad were really proud and appreciative. “To me, a dance felt like as good an opportunity as any to dedicate something to my family and I felt like it was a very special thing to do.”
Both he and Alexis are astonished by how quickly the competition has raced by. “I feel like we’ve been very much taking each week as it comes and enjoying each dance, each concept, getting to know each other and creating that friendship,” Alexis says. “Now it’s wild to think like how soon it is to be over. I’m gonna have withdrawals for sure. I’m a very emotional person, so I will not be OK.”
He agrees that it will be a “shame” when it’s all over, but George also confesses that physically he’s ready for a break. “I think the body is getting to a point now where I would quite like a rest, but I don’t think I’ll ever mentally feel, ‘OK I’m done now’. Even if we were to get a 40 or something, we’d still want to do all the dances again, just to see how we’ve improved.”
Going forward, he plans to keep dancing with his model girlfriend Yasmin Bennett, who has long wanted to learn some steps with him. And if Strictly opens certain doors for him then he’s going to step through as many as possible. “I think my number one priority would always be YouTube and the online world, because that’s what I’ve grown up wanting to do and I feel very grateful for this career,” he says. “But whenever I get a new opportunity, I want to see where it leads because the internet is so volatile, it really depends on how long people are interested and there’s no real timeframe for that.”
Offers he’d love to receive include being invited onto programmes like Would I Lie to You? or Taskmaster. “To be on a panel show that I’ve watched growing up, that would just be so cool.”
