fpb | Damn

Of course your favourites don't always win. But I really did not think that Martina Hingis deserved to go out at the first stage of Strictly Come Dancing. Ah well, at least this relieves me from the need to follow it through to the conclusion, which would have meant putting up with the several completely wrong alterations (the BBC does not seem to have heard of the principle not to touch a winning team) as well as with all the bad features that are evidently still present - in particular the grotesque popular votes. I did not think Joe Calzaghe deserved to stay, let alone be above Martina, but then he is the greatest boxer Britain produced in a century (and he is really Italian, please notice - just as they had to call in an Italian called Fabio to get their soccer team to perform) - and no doubt all the boxing fans will vote for him no matter what. As for Linda Bellingham, she evidently benefited from all the perverse votes that went to John Sergeant last year. Sad, really. Martina deserved better. But to judge from what I saw, neither the BBC nor the public did.