Strictly Come Dancing Betting: Can I have a Di Angelo to go, please.

Strictly Come Dancing / Chicken Dinner / 14 December 2007 / Leave a Comment

It's getting tight over at Strictly Come Dancing, real tight with the final elimination looming.

Now that all the deadwood has been stripped away (Kelly Brooks the obvious exception), a whiff of how the phone votes are going has emerged. It turns out that Alesha Dixon, [8.0] to go on Betfair, isn't as popular as everyone thought. Last week she was lined up in the bottom two against Letitia Dean; a genuine shock, which now suggests that it could be Gethin's to lose.

The only real surprise this weekend would be for Gethin ([5.1] to go) and Alesha to hit the bottom two together. But after Matt Di Angelo's horror show ([1.37] to go) last weekend when he just stopped dancing, he must be a certainty for the Sunday evening showdown. In combination with either Jones or Dixon he would be the one the judges give the chop. Judge Horwood appears to hate him.

Alesha has been far too good - probably the best contestant ever - while Jones has been gradually growing in stature and popularity from the start. As things stand, there is a whisker between Gethin and Alesha in the win market, but in the battle of the boys, Jones has Di Angelo beat on sex appeal and good nature. There is something slightly too smug about Di Angelo, which must surely sway the voters in the direction of something a little more wholesome and Welsh.

Should the nightmare scenario of Dixon against Jones for elimination come to pass, then the judges would probably sway to Dixon. For the last two years the finals have been all-male (Gough v Jackson, 2005; Ramprakash v Dawson, last year), and her standout Cha Cha Cha is better than anything Jones has mustered up. She has simply done too much to warrant not being there.

Either way, it should be a boy/girl final with the clever money on Di Angelo for the chop this week.