As claims mount, is Strictly facing its last waltz?

Places in the Strictly audience are the light entertainment equivalent of Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. So why did this invitation arrive like a brick through the window?

This is meant to be Strictly’s big year, when it celebrates two decades at the top of the shiny-floor show league. Instead, allegations of bullying, the departure of professional dancers, and the possibility of more claims to come, threaten to shatter the show’s image.

This week, the Reverend Richard Coles, a former contestant, said few people involved in Strictly could be surprised by the allegations.

He told Times Radio: “I remember somebody who worked on the show for years telling me: ‘Strictly is a wonderful show with a dark heart.’”

Dame Esther Rantzen, who appeared in the second series, said the show had become “a sacred cow”.

Too big to fail, too hot to drop, too lucrative to abandon, what is to be done about Strictly?

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Strictly featured several times in the storylines of WIA, the BBC comedy about the BBC. One crisis - entirely fictional - involved newspaper claims that Evan Davis, then of Newsnight, would be joining the show as a contestant, much to the dismay of an old-school news executive worried about the Beeb’s standing.

“Can you imagine what will happen if the main anchor [of Newsnight] starts turning up on Saturday nights in spray-on trousers, with sparkly hair, clamped to some half-naked orange-faced girl?” the senior editor rants.

There is nothing amusing about the complaints being investigated by the BBC. The crisis began last October when the Sherlock actor Amanda Abbington, partnered with professional dancer Giovanni Pernice, pulled out of Strictly. She later said she had been diagnosed with “mild PTSD”.

Pernice rejected allegations he displayed “abusive or threatening behaviour” and said he looked forward to clearing his name.

In June this year, the BBC confirmed Pernice would not be returning for the new series.

Next, the Mail on Sunday reported that dancer Graziano Di Prima had been sacked after allegations about his treatment of the documentary maker and Love Island star, Zara McDermott.

“I deeply regret the events that led to my departure from Strictly,” Di Prima wrote on Instagram. “My intense passion and determination to win might have affected my training regime.”

He has since admitted kicking Ms McDermott once during rehearsals.

Claims are surfacing about another as yet unnamed dancer, and other contestants are reported to have come forward with complaints.

Another former contestant, Ann Widdecombe, has defended the programme, saying “Grow up everybody”.

Ann Widdecombe in Strictly (Image: BBC/Guy Levy)

The ex-Conservative minister said everything was filmed so there was always at least one other person in the room during training. She also questioned why the celebrity contestants had not stood up for themselves. Speaking on the Jeremy Vine Show on Channel 5, she said: “These are adults, what do we mean bullying? Why didn’t they take action?”

McDermott, for one, said she feared “public backlash” and “victim shaming”.

A week ago Amanda Abbington told the Sunday Times she had been subjected to death and rape threats on social media since making her complaint.

“I’ve had the worst experience. The show was tough and horrible, but the aftermath of it I was not expecting,” she said.

The BBC investigation is continuing. In the meantime, the corporation has announced that a member of the production team will be present “at all times” during training room rehearsals, and there will be a celebrity welfare producer and a professional dancer welfare producer. Chaperones, death threats, reputations and livelihoods at risk, and lawyers involved. How did a fun show for all the family end up in so much strife?

Viewers who tuned in for the first episode of Come Dancing, as it was then called, on 29 September 1950, could never have imagined any such trouble ahead. Come Dancing was the epitome of safe viewing. Men in tie and tails, women in dresses with skirts the size of dinghies, dancers a regulation distance apart. The only excitement happened when couples not paying enough attention careered into each other like dodgems.

Over the years the costumes became slightly more revealing and the music more up to date, but ballroom was on the way out. Disco had arrived and Come Dancing was shunted into a late spot in the schedules.

That would have been that if not for Aussie film director Baz Luhrmann and a little film called Strictly Ballroom. Someone had the bright idea to blend the spirit of the TV show and the film and in 2004 Strictly Come Dancing arrived, pairing celebrities - sports stars, actors, and other well kent faces - with professional dancers. It was an instant hit.

Strictly has been hit by controversy (Image: BBC)

The show was sold around the world, the money began rolling in, and every year “Strictly” became a little slicker. There were still “comedy” contestants with two left feet, there for the laughs they could provide rather than their dance skills, but the “amateur” dancers were increasingly polished.

Dame Esther Rantzen believes this increasing professionalisation is a large part of the problem. She told Times Radio: “It’s become much more dancey. It’s become technically much more difficult and it’s become much more of a competition.

“I can understand why producers want the dance to be lovely, but actually, this is an entertainment show about amateurs.”

She added: “The only worry I have is why it took so long for these complaints to surface. I’m sure the steps they’ve taken will be effective, but they do need to ask themselves why nobody dares make a complaint when things go wrong.”

Could this really be the beginning of the end for Strictly? It seems impossible but no show has a right to exist, and the ones that attract enough bad headlines are especially vulnerable to the scheduler’s axe.

Strictly, for all its current troubles, has been a good servant of the BBC and a joy to millions of viewers. Across 20 years and changing, though mostly Tory, governments, the show has been a light in the window for the corporation. Whatever storms might come along, whatever the changes in viewing habits, everybody still came home to Strictly.

Will they do so again? We will only know once the viewing figures start to arrive. In the meantime, as the hosts say, there’s nothing for it but to “keep dancing …”