It’s probably wrong to be as obsessed with a TV programme as I am with Strictly Come Dancing, but if it is then I don’t want to be right.
I love that show. I have loved it since the very first programme and I love it still – I don’t know why. I only know that the real reason I would ever aspire to celebrity would be so that I could go on that show and learn to dance with either Anton or Matt, I’m not fussed which.
Sometimes I find myself day dreaming about what it would take to become famous enough to be offered a slot on the show. I could make friends with Jordan, I muse, We could go out scantily clad and get photographed by the paparazzi getting into taxis at 3 a.m. Except that I’ve noticed recently that Jordan is a rather settled lady now, a happily married mother and all that – not to mention that I don’t exactly have the physique to climb into taxis scantily clad since having a child. Plus the last time I was up at 3 a.m it was because my daughter had a tummy bug.
Also for this particular celebrity reality show you have to be a proper celebrity, one who has been on a soap or a breakfast TV sofa for quite some years, not just some upstart who took her bra off on Big Brother. So that rules out my plan to get ‘lost’ at sea in a canoe and then turn up five years later having forgotten everything but the fact that I love to cha-cha-cha. Not only would I not be the right kind of celebrity but I’d be arrested – and that is a fatal flaw in the plan because I am fairly sure you don’t get out of jail early to to learn how to tango on the telly.
The lovely leggy and charming Penny Lancaster Stewart scored her spot by being a model/photographer/rock star’s wife. I feel its probably going to be quite difficult for me to marry a rock star at this stage of my life. First off I am already married and whilst that wouldn’t necessarily be a deal breaker I don’t know any rock stars who long for a thirty something writer on the comfortable side of slim, who regularly dyes out her greys. Besides I think I missed my chance to marry a pop star when in the 1990s I failed to get Gary Barlow to fall in love with me from the back of the Birmingham NEC (it was all the those screaming girls getting in the way that ruined it for me)
Is it possible that a writer can ever be famous enough to get on ‘Strictly’? Well, the only reason I am bitterly jealous of the wonderful Marion Keyes is not because of her substantial talent or well deserved success – its because she gets to go on Strictly Come Dancing: It takes two. She gets to meet Claudia and go round the set and touch the dancers. On the one hand I commend her for her pioneering spirit going where writers of popular fiction have rarely been before and on the other hand, every time she is on, I inwardly cry ‘IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME!’
There’s just about half an hour to go to the live Saturday show now. What’s Aliesha thinking about, I wonder? How’s Letitia this week? Which one of the boys will shine now, Gethin or Matt? I’ll be nervous every single second that I am watching it and I’ll hold my breath through out all of the dances. And then when its finished I’ll sigh and try and think of another way to score an invite onto the show. If only Jim’ll Fix it was still going…..