Chelsee’s Cha, Cha, Cha A Potential Chart-Topper
It’s Broadway Week on Strictly tomorrow night, and potentially a chance for contestants other than Jason to steal the limelight. He has been top of the leaderboard for the first two weeks and if he tops it again, the series will start to look like a bit of a procession. For this reason we think he is worth opposing in the Highest Scorer market, as we can envisage a more critical analysis from the judges and a stingier set of scores.
The four most likely to challenge him for top spot are Harry doing a jive, Chelsee doing a cha, cha, cha, Holly doing a tango, and Anita doing a jive. Artem produced a superb tango in last year’s series with Kara but Holly hasn’t appeared totally at ease in training and intimated on ITT last night that it’s likely to be one of her weaker dances. But if executed well, Holly behind bars dancing to ‘Cell Block Tango’ could prove a dramatic triumph.
Chelsee says she is aiming to ‘tone down’ her movements – which hopefully equates to her discovering more refinement – and Harry is due something of a bounce back from last week’s disappointing scores, doing a potentially fun, entertaining routine to ‘Grease Lightening’. The same comment applies to Anita dancing to the toe-tapping ‘You Can’t Stop The Beat’.
With the jive being such a tough dance to nail perfectly, and given Holly’s comments and the training footage we’ve seen of her, we think Chelsee is the value bet to be Highest Scorer at 10-1 with Ladbrokes. We would also advise laying Jason on Betfair at anything close to Evens as it looks like there are at least 4 couples capable of scoring higher than him and Kristina this week.
As far as this week’s elimination market is concerned, Lulu had looked initial value at 12-1 but her difficult rumba has been choreographed brilliantly by Brendan, by all accounts, and they’ve been doing the rounds at the BBC today, which often helps boost a couple’s vote. So it is looking increasingly like a match between Nancy and Audley.
Nancy is doing a tango and her dancing has been so poor thus far it is hard to envisage much improvement. Up to now she has got away with falling into the category of ‘so bad, it’s good’ in her routines with Anton. Going for comedy is probably her best chance of survival because if they play it straight she will likely be in big trouble.
Audley will have to try and execute a quickstep which wouldn’t appear a natural fit for a man with size 14 feet. But he was bottom 2 last week so could be given a bit of a ramp by the panel – ‘If you’re in the bottom 2 after that, I’ll eat my hat’ – sort of thing from Len.
Nancy is a best-priced 7-4; Audley 15-8, and pre-show it’s a 50/50 shout for us so those odds make no appeal.
We are far keener to recommend Ladbrokes weekly special that Craig’s highest score will be an 8 or less at 4-6. The sour-faced nit-picker surely won’t be getting his 9 out yet in what is, effectively, only week 2 of the competition.
Rob Furber