Ashley Roberts and Pasha Kovalev topped the leaderboard with a perfect score after the highly-anticipated Strictly Come Dancing Blackpool show.
The couple’s jive wowed the judges and saw them showered with praise and win 10s across the board on a night of high scores at the Tower Ballroom.
Roberts and Kovalev paid tribute to their surroundings after a fish and chip shop-themed, high-energy routine, which earned the famous comment of “fab-u-lous” from judge Craig Revel Horwood.
Bruno Tonioli joined in the praise, saying the couple made “Strictly history” with their show-stopping performance.
Judges were not shy to award 10s on a show packed with almost-perfect routines, which was opened with a performance by Gloria Estefan.
Charles Venn and Karen Clifton earned a score of 38, putting them in joint second place, for their sizzling samba which saw the actor dubbed “King Charles I of Samba” by Tonioli.
Revel Horwood said he “wasn’t paying attention to the footwork”, and instead was looking at Venn’s physique. Venn said: “I was living out my dream. It was amazing.”
Faye Tozer and Giovanni Pernice danced a fiery Paso Doble, and sealed their place in joint-second with another score of 38, earning two 10s in the process.
Joe Sugg was left emotional after earning the show’s third score of 38, dancing the quickstep with Dianne Buswell while his grandmother watched from the audience.
Stacey Dooley was first to perform and descended on a giant stick of Blackpool rock, before launching into a salsa with Kevin Clifton.
She earned praise from Revel Horwood for her “fantastic” hips as they secured a total of 33 points.
Graeme Swann steered clear of the bottom two this week, with a confident couple’s choice theatre and jazz number with Oti Mabuse. Swann said: “I don’t think I’ve ever had this much love in 90 seconds.”
Facing the dance-off are Kate Silverton and Aljaz Skorjanec, along with Lauren Steadman and AJ Pritchard.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article