The celebrity dancing contest known affectionately to us all as Strictly (come dancing) has pretty much become top news today. The contestants are made up of a mixture of models, Tv people, actors and on the way out sports people many of whom take the thing incredibly seriously, the judges are choreographers and ex dancers themselves who appear to take themselves and the competition very seriously indeed. Along then in the mix comes a retired political journalist with two left feet who is definitely in it for a bit of fun and a British public who don’t like to be told who to vote for and take against the apparent bullying and unpleasantness exibited by the judges and therefore vote to keep him in even when he should have been voted off.

In a week when we have had wall to wall Baby P coverage, in which stocks continue to fall, the pound rallies only briefly and we are told 3 million will soon be out of work this is the kind of relief we have all been waiting for. This is headline news, this is something politicians and sun newspaper readers alike have an opinion on; indeed many politicians it seems are very envious of the contestants on this particular reality show. What is it then about showing the world you think you can dance when you probably can’t? This is something that looks really easy to do. You prance around the floor moving your body and feet in a particular series of ways to music and it all looks beautiful and graceful – well maybe for some it does, but for most of us when we try we find that it is much less simple than it looks. The programme is strangely compelling because the contestants are dancing with experts, they look as if they practice hard but the end result is often amusing rather than graceful (with a few exceptions of course).

John Sargent has become the surprise star of this series a kind of anti hero. He can’t really dance even after much practice, he is not all that graceful  – over 60 and not exactly slim and trim and he dances with a smile on his face of both pleasure and surprise that he is still around the show. The judges would give him no points if they could, because they say his continued presence devalues the show. They however miss the point. On a Saturday night in credit crunched Britain we want light relief. We want to see people having a go at this dancing like, we want to see improvement, but it isn’t life and death and we don’t want it treated as such. If the public are invited to vote for their favorite it should come as not surprise to the judges that they use a slightly different scoring system to theirs. What is more they shouldn’t then rant on about the injustice of it all. It is a TV show, it is entertainment and it is not the olympics!

So now John has done the decent thing. He has saved the blushes of the BBC and of the judges by leaving the show. There was a danger that the publicity he was getting was going to help him win. But actually life isn’t always about the most talented being first past the post. Sometimes there is much more value about the journey and about recognising that a winner has more qualities than you might imagine.