What a sad thing Strictly Come Dancing has become

Those of a violently masochistic disposition would have heartily enjoyed the Saturday matinée of the Strictly Come Dancing: Live Tour at the Utilita Arena, Birmingham.

What deliciously perverse pleasure was to be drawn on this bleakly cold afternoon from the vast, snaking queues, the blared injunctions from the Tannoy, the drear concrete ambience, the over-priced merchandise tat and the chaos of the ultra-processed catering outlets – not to mention the £15 charge for leaving an empty backpack in the cloakroom.

And then there was the show. How sad that what started off 20 years ago as a timely refreshment of a long moribund and cringingly genteel television institution should have ended up as the victim of its own success, a super-slick machine, cynically scripted and formulaic. All the original good humour and fun of a lovely piece of Saturday night BBC1 family entertainment is now screamingly hysterical in tone. ‘I’m having the best time of my life,’ the competitors with rictus grins all parrot in their inane post-dance interviews. ‘It’s been amazing, an incredible experience.’

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The four judges merely parody themselves, delivering little more than a gladiatorial thumbs up or down after each dance. Just don’t mention the tabloid coverage of backstage nastiness and seedy abuse, because we’re all having the best time of our lives, aren’t we?

The quality of the amateurs’ dancing – which should be the heart of the matter – seems increasingly irrelevant, coated as it is in bling and the hard-edged gyrations of the professionals. Every turn is over-costumed, over-staged and often reliant on some idiotic novelty concept (this year’s nadir being a ketchup and mustard-themed routine) that takes all one’s attention away from the precision and elegance with which the steps are being executed.