Within two years – maybe one – the pre-eminent mode of political discourse in our society will be things that did or didn’t happen on Strictly Come Dancing. This imperial phase for our culture was actually all predicted by Edmund Burke in a sealed section of A Vindication of Natural Society, viewable only by those with a pure heart and the sophisticated conviction that ballroom has always been war by other means. I think Burke also foresaw Gregg Wallace, whom we’ll come to in a sec.
As you may know, the top-rated BBC Saturday night show has once again been fitted with its “row” suffix. The latest incident to rock Strictly, in the parlance of these things, concerns pro dancer Katya Jones and Wynne Evans, the guy who plays the opera singer Gio Compario from the Go.Compare adverts. And if you gave in to even a twitch of a smile at the thought of contemporary sexual politics being litigated via those proxies, then you should be immediately reclassified into that least escapable modern category: Part of the Problem. As for the problem – is it very bad to have spent two days scrutinising the footage, watching the row mushroom, studying the two separate apology videos for something the pair insist was a joke, and still be distinctly unclear on what did or didn’t happen? If so, I can only apologise.
