Strictly Come Dancing Betting: Final trio warm-up for the last stretch

Strictly Come Dancing / Chicken Dinner / 11 December 2007 / Leave a Comment

Gethin edges into favouritism as Di Angelo wobbles...

After an entire series looking unstoppable, Alesha Dixon is suddenly being given a hard run in the home stretch. Wholesome Blue Peter presenter Gethin Jones, [2.02] to win, is perfect for a BBC teatime audience: cheerful, enthusiastic and determined. And, of course, he does the stuff with his hips that makes women of a certain age squeal with delight, before muttering something unprintable about what might happen if they were a bit younger.

Also in his favour is that he has the same good looks/nice guy ratio as last year's winner, Ramprakash.

He has now outdanced Alesha [2.38] two weeks in a row, conjuring flashbacks of Zoe Ball in series three. Like Dixon, Ball was the front runner right up until around week eight (having won five of the previous seven shows), before slipping behind Colin Jackson and Darren Gough. In her last three weeks Ball failed to score the highest marks for an individual dance, and Alesha is now on two and counting. Might she have peaked too soon? Or is she yet another victim of Britain's institutional racism which saw Lemar cruelly robbed of the title in Fame Academy (2002), despite being leagues ahead of the competition?

Bear in mind that this is the same channel that thought it fine to screen the highly dubious Strictly African Dancing in 2005, which skirted dangerously close to the days of the Black and White Minstrels and guffawing idiots complaining that they can't understand what the well-mannered Indian gentleman next door is saying.

Casual racism aside, should the judges be faced this week with a choice between the two boys, Di Angelo [8.6] should get the chop - especially in light of the furore surrounding his appalling attempts to dance at the weekend.

That said, whenever the final three has been boy/boy/girl, the girl has come in third place, so history would insist that Gethin and Matt will be fighting for the top spots.