The Woman Who Talked Too Much

As I've mentioned, I've not been well lately, and regretfully I've decided to take some time out from blogging amongst other things. Particular apologies to followers of Strictlywatch! There's always next year... Happy Christmas everyone and hope to see you back here soon.

Oh Strictly, Strictly, what have you done to me? I liked the Rock'n'Rolls - basically like the Jive, but fun; and the Charlestons were brilliantly bonkers; but thanks to this week's special guests, now what I want, what I REALLY REALLY want, is to see the Strictly Come Dancers doing Riverdance. Imagine it... And now! Would David Tennant and his partner Flavia Caccace please take to the floor, dancing Riverdance, to the sounds of Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet! You know I'm right.

I did enjoy this week. The two new dances provided a much-needed burst of novelty, and my most yawn-inducing dance, the Viennese Waltz, was much perked up by making everyone do it at the same time, with excellent rehearsal footage of them all elbowing each other in the face. I'm also hoping this marks the disappearance of the Viennese Waltz from the final, in which it is always the most tedious element.

All the Charlestons were nuts, and I am overlooking any twinges of irritating because nuts is better than dull. Chris's dancing faces were perhaps too much even for me, but he and Ola made up for it by that weird rolling on the floor move that they did at the end; meanwhile both Laila (whingey) and Ali (wet) were able to display a sense of fun for a change.

Natalie and Vincent were massively short-changed by being the only Rock'n'Rolling couple aside from Ricky & Natalie, and were always going to look seriously rubbish in comparison, given that Vincent can hardly lift Natalie C, whereas Ricky can toss his Natalie with one hand. Ahem. Even so, if I'd been watching in real time, they'd have got my vote, simply because their training VT of Vincent refusing to do a roly-poly had me in tears of laughter. Then when they got knocked out I was in tears of tears, especially when Vincent cried. They do seem to have had a really beautiful, proper friendship, which is always my favourite thing about Strictly, far more than the romances. Friendship in narrative is seriously underrated. Natalie and Vincent were one of my all-time favourite Strictly Couples, and judging by the ovation at the end, I am not alone.

However, despite the appearance of Darcey Bussell and the semi-final where we finally get to see my favourite dance (Argentine Tango) notwithstanding, it's shaping up to be a very boring end of season for Strictly. Ricky Whittle hasn't done his popularity much good by getting himself arrested (though file under the Anton Racism school of IT NEVER HAPPENED as far as the BBC are concerned) and Laila surely can't be a real contender, so Ali and Pepe le Piu must be a shoe-in for the title - with perhaps a shock result of the Sylvanian Family Dancers in second place, as they will probably gather up all of Natalie and Vincent's votes.

So maybe it's Vote Team Cola! Never thought I'd say that. What can I tell you; I'm still not well.

See it all here.

As mentioned a while back, I'm not too well at the moment, and one of the symptoms is being extraordinarily tired much of the time, so I am spending several hours a day in bed reading.

Yes, you're right. It could be a lot worse.

First up for discussion is Sebastian Barry's 'The Secret Scripture'. This is the second Sebastian Barry book I've read, the first being the heartrendingly brilliant 'A Long, Long Way', his account of a young Irish soldier in the First World War. That one was on the Booker shortlist in 2005, and lost to John Banville's 'The Sea', and I can't say whether that was fair as I have not read the latter, but I find it hard to believe it could be much better than 'A Long, Long Way' which is the best book by far I've ever read about WW1, and I have read many of the usual suspects (Pat Barker trilogy, 'Birdsong' etc.)

So I was very excited about reading 'The Secret Scripture', also Booker shortlisted, this time in 2008. This one is about a 100-year-old Irish woman, Roseanne, who has been in a lunatic asylum since the 1950s, and the doctor who is trying to determine her mental state to see if she is fit for release when said asylum is scheduled for demolition. The book moves between the diaries of both characters, that of Roseanne detailing her upbringing in early 20th century Ireland and the events that led to her incarceration, and that of the Doctor describing his attempts to uncover the truth about her, and his sadness at the recent loss of his wife.

So far so good, and it is wonderfully written and evocative, if not quite to the heights of 'A Long, Long Way'. But I had a dim memory of one of the Booker judges having broken ranks and saying that the reason that 'The Secret Scriptures' had missed out on the Booker win (to Arvind Adiga's 'The White Tiger') was that it had an incredibly bad ending. Of course I was intrigued to see if that would turn out to be the case.

Well, let me tell you. 'The Secret Scripture' has the most stupid, ridiculous, laughable, demented, throw-the-book-out-of-the-window endings I have ever come across. It is awful. It is insane. You wonder what the hell possessed Sebastian Barry, and what makes it worse is I don't think that this was a help-what-do-I-do-to-finish-this, I-know, it-was-all-a-dream ending, I think this ending was planned right from the very start. And it is also completely unnecessary. You could have had exactly the same book with a vastly different ending, barely changing anything else about it, and it would have been a fantastic book about which I would not have had a word of criticism. How did this get past his agent and his editor? How?

I don't know whether to recommend that you read it but skip the last 50 pages, read it and relish in the horror of the terrible ending, or just don't read it at all. I'm inclined to point you in the direction of 'A Long, Long Way' instead, as well as Maggie O'Farrell's similarly-themed 'The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox'.

Ironically enough, 'A Long, Long Way' has an exceptional ending, indeed one of my favourite endings of an book, that had me sobbing my little heart out.

Sebastian Barry: see me after class.

More book reviews to come.

I have come up with a new, brilliant, theory, though I say so myself, and I didn't even need an apple to fall on my head: the BBC don't know when to say "enough". They kept adding episodes of Eastenders until there were so many that keeping up with it was a full-time job - so I quit. And now they've added so many couples to Strictly that it now goes on for about half the year so that even the [Karen] Hardiest of us die of boredom before it's done. BBC! Less Strictly is more! I speak as Strictly's biggest* fan when I say: FEWER COUPLES NEXT YEAR.

Here is the song I think might be going around the BBC's head at all times when it comes to Strictly. Listen to the lyrics, look at the outfit, look at the hair. BELIEVE. And then imagine me doing the Cha Cha Cha to it once I have written a book that makes me famous enough / married and divorced a Rolling Stone:



*I may not actually be Strictly's biggest fan, but I think I might be the one wearing the nicest burgundy top today.

Is it midseason fatigue or has Strictly got suddenly, fatally dull?

This is my third attempt at a Strictlywatch for this week. But what is there to say? Bruce was back to his smug, homophobic ways (telling Craig not to call men "darling") - GET RID GET RID GET RID - Tess was back in the backroom being boring (bring back Claudia), Ali and Brian's foxtrot was nice, so was Laila and Anton's waltz. Then again, I had to sit at my keyboard for several seconds before I remembered Laila's NAME. That can't be good. Ricky and Natalie's American Smooth was slow and sweet and then had an incredibly stupid, attention-seeking lift (oh it's so romantic, oh it's so romantic, oh I can LIFT YOU ABOVE MY HEAD - doesn't resonate with any dates I've ever been on, but I am quite sheltered). Alesha - cabin fever setting in? - gave it a ten. My theory? Alesha madly fancies Ricky, and he has rejected her, probably the week of the notorious backflip, so she has to cover it up by constantly banging on about how amazing the chemistry between him and Natalie is, and insanely over-marking them, to show she HAS NO BITTERNESS. Chris and Ola's Viennese Waltz was fine. They went to a ballet school in the VT just to emphasise how Sylvanian Family they really are. Natalie and Vincent's samba was pretty grim, but then sambas are, and I have a desperate need for Natalie to stay in the competition, now that the personality has left with Phil and the only potential challenge to Ali / Ricky has been popped out with Jade's knee. And Ricky and Erin went out on a tango that was dreadful on the first attempt, when Ricky just sort of walked around a bit, and merely not very good on the dance-off attempt, when Ricky apparently danced it. All I can say is thank the lord they are doing two new dances next week (rock-n-roll / charleston) or I might just drift off completely.

I mean, I know I should have more to say about this but really. Yawns a-go-go.

For our special guest age watchers, I can report that this week we had Dame Shirley Bassey, a wee slip of a lass at 71.

Sorry. I know this is lacklustre. Did I miss something? Was it any good?

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS...

I know it went out days ago, but it feels unnatural to let an episode of Doctor Who go by without comment. (I have visions of myself standing outside the gates of heaven with St Peter saying "I read your blog, you know - what were you DOING between November 15th and 20th 2009?") Also, I can wax lyrical for page after page on episodes of Doctor Who I didn't like (number one cause of hatemail on this blog, stats fans) so it seems unfair to remain silent on one that I absolutely bloody LOVED.

Space station in peril is one of my favourite Who modes anyway, and bleak Who is my second favourite variety after, well, anything in which David Tennant cracks lots of jokes, gets wet, wears his glasses, and licks something. And maybe does a little dance. But anyhow, this was EPIC bleak. I should have guessed in advance, given the casting of Lindsay Duncan as "companion" (not really so much companion as equal, or, arguably, superior by the end) - she is a woman whose armpits probably excrete gravitas instead of sweat.

Anyway, essentially, what we have is the Doctor rocking up to Mars, finding a space base there, realising that it is going to be destroyed that very day killing everyone inside, and in order to protect the integrity of time he MUST NOT FOR ANY REASON SAVE THEM, and he spends almost the entire episode not saving them, feeling awful, but reluctantly bonding with them despite knowing they will all be dead within hours, walking away as they are slowly taken over by parasitic monsters, before finally realising that he can't bring himself to desert them, rescuing the last remaining survivors, but sacrificing his sanity in the process, his actions leading directly to the suicide of the head of the base, and ending the episode abandoned and on his knees, overwhelmed with the horror of his hubris and realising the inevitability of his own impending death.

Just read that over again, only this time I want you to imagine that it was a family show largely aimed at children, broadcast around teatime in the run-up to Christmas.

That's right. BLOODY BRILLIANT.

You know what would have made that even better for me? If just before Lindsay Duncan went into her house to kill herself, she had casually turned around on her doorstep and shot the Doctor first, so that he had died a banal death all alone in the snow, instead of whatever OTT whistles-and-bells everything-but-the-kitchen-sink guest-starring-EVERYONE-who-has-ever-been-in-Who-EVER Messianic exit is lined up for the Christmas Special. Man, that would have been BLEAK. But that's just my preference.

(Of course, if that HAD happened, we wouldn't have had DT's Doc on Children in Need tonight, wearing the *exact* same hat I wear when I'm working outdoors on sunny days (I wonder if his also has a label inside that says "this is a fancy dress accessory item for adults, it is not a toy"), and sunglasses and a lei, on a snow-covered planet, making jokes about having boffed Queen Elizabeth the First, so I can see the perks.)

It's getting very close to the end.

If it has to be a crap ending, can we at least have Rose and Donna duetting I Know Him So Well over the Doctor's mutating body?



Rose is Elaine and Donna is Barbara. *Obviously*.

I'm going to have to watch what I say very carefully this week, as last week's mention that I wanted Brucie to die, I mean retire, seems to have had a disastrous impact on his health. Sorry, Bruce. Can't you just move to a remote Caribbean island somewhere? Anyway, it was interesting to see how the show coped without him. Tess taking the front-of-house role proved, despite my loathing of the Forsythe, that you really do need someone with a sense of humour in charge - she has the comic timing of a clock that's been trampled by grumpy elephants - whereas Claudia was genius in the backstage role. I was exceedingly excited to see Ronnie Corbett, the only man alive who is smaller than his own eyebrows, taking a "presenting" role, but he was wasted on a mere opening link and a couple of jokes from the sidelines. My new evil plan is Ronnie and Claudia presenting, and Tess can go and get a lucrative contract somewhere I never need to see her again. Like America, or ITV.

Everything else was a bit of a shambles too. Poor Jade busted her knee in dress rehearsal and couldn't dance, which was selfishly awful because I was dying to see her tango, and even worse than that it could have implications for her Olympic training, and it was a horrible start to the show to see her sitting in her apparently quite lovely dress (well it does happen) too upset to speak. And Laila buggered her ankle, danced anyway, and had to be carried off halfway through in tears. And then - AND THEN - my beloved Phil and Katya got knocked out. (Also, I didn't like the different music they used when the dancers came down the stairs at the start of the show, and I have been wondering where I can put this into the paragraph of Strictly disaster without looking totally shallow, but there is nowhere, and I am totally shallow, but please can we have the old music back?) Basically, this was the Strictly Come Dancing of DOOM.

For what it's worth, though, to the copples.

Phil and Katya, American Smooth. As soon as I saw they were first I knew they were in trouble. Unusually for Strictly, there is nobody I hate left in the show, and I'm guessing most people feel the same way, so dance order is key. Dancing first is a bit of a disaster, because by the end nobody can remember what the hell it was that you did, even if it was a lovely American Smooth and if I just let my eyes go blurry a bit it could be me whirling round in the arms of Phil Tufnell, if by blurry I mean "colour blind" as Katya INSISTS on being blonde, but I love Phil doing ballroom, and, SOB, now there will be no Phil. I really need to start watching Strictly on Saturday nights so I can actually vote.

Ricky Whittle and Natalie, Jive. Funny how now that I know Ricky and Natalie are boffing I don't like it any more. It's the old will-they-won't-they thing, it all goes horribly wrong when they actually do. Like Moonlighting, and Northern Exposure, and that boyfriend I had a few years back, no need to go into details. Anyway. I really liked this jive which went at the speed of light, and I tend to be very disappointed by jives, which is Jill Halfpenny's fault for showing how good they can be, in the same way that Mark Ramprakash has raised the bar impossibly high for salsas. Another positive was that Natalie danced it in great big pants. I am a big fan of jive outfits consisting of great big pants. It's like the dancer is trying to figure out if the support knickers she's got on in the changing rooms at M&S are going to be stretchy enough to allow the full range of movement without causing gangrene.

Ricky Groves and Erin, Viennese Waltz. We all know how I feel about the Viennese Waltz. It is enough to say that the most interesting thing about this one is that Ricky had his glasses on. This was the other dance in the dance off and I'd have sent them home myself, but then again, I do not go to bed at night imagining myself being held in the sweet soft arms of Ricky Groves, while being dressed as Erin Boag.

Chris and Ola, Paso Doble. Utterly ludicrous in every way. I thought Chris was going to strangle himself with his cape, or, failing that, choke on his own face. But Chris and Ola have won the hearts and minds battle and may well make the final. It's like watching Sylvanian Families dance, you can't resist. Visual aid for Sylvanian Families:


Now imagine those rabbits doing the Paso Doble. Alesha gave them a 9, which was beyond the call of sanity.

Laila and Anton, rumba. The rumba, as you know by now, gives me a full body cringe which is like a Mexican Wave starting at my toes all the way up to the roots of my hair, but somewhere around my bellybutton Laila burst into tears and was carried off. Maybe it was her ankle, maybe it was having to pretend to want to shag Anton. Who can say? But up til that point it was looking pretty good. Craig's 3 was a masterclass in humbuggery.

Natalie and Vincent, foxtrot. This is the "I can't remember it" dance of the week. There is always one. It's probably when I hit a blood sugar low or something. I do remember Natalie pretending to be a tortoise in the VT though. Terrifyingly convincing.

Ali and Brian, Cha Cha Cha. To the weirdest music you can imagine. Some kind of electro thing. Really not the wisest style of music to give to Dave Arch, his Fabulous Singers and his Wonderful Orchestra, who tend to be in their comfort zone singing Frank Sinatra. And Ali was wearing hair extensions. And the Cha Cha Cha is another potentially very stupid dance. And I am sick of this boffing storyline too. Astonishingly, with all these handicaps - arguably a harder ask than dancing on Jade's busted knee - this was very good.

Of the entertainment while awaiting the Dreaded Dance Off, I would like to draw particular attention to the special guest singers. Last week, I complained of Strictly's penchant for inviting people on who are past retirement age - the BeeGees, Rod Stewart, Brucie himself, and I forgot, but was reminded in the comments, of Andy Williams (82). This week Strictly made a special effort, by booking some actual young men to sing, which made a nice change. Of course, it was the cast of the Jersey Boys, pretending to be Frankie Valli (75) and the Four Seasons, but it was a zimmerframed step in the right direction.

Like Samuel Beckett, who I am sure would have loved Strictly, I can't go on, because after that all roads lead inexorably to the departure of Phil and Katya. But if you want to watch the whole thing, including that sad, sad ending, you can catch it, as usual, over here.

Just switched on my PVR to discover that it hasn't recorded any of the programmes that I have set over the last several weeks. No Strictly over the weekend, no Doctor Who, no True Blood, no Peep Show, and none of the entire series of The Thick Of It that I was looking forward to savouring in one sinful burst. I will be attempting to summon as much as possible via iPlayer so there will be essential reviews (by which I mean Strictlywatch and Who) but I am MOST displeased as I'm sure there will be plenty that's gone from my reach forever.

GRRRRRRRRR.

This is as good a time as any to apologise for the relative silence on the blog, I've been suffering from the recurrence of a debilitating though by no means dangerous condition which has made it hard for me to work, in which I include blog writing, and though it is nothing to worry about it does mean I may be posting a bit less frequently for a while. Maybe you can spend the time watching The Thick Of It, which you have recorded, OVER and OVER again. (Sob).

I am now going to go and watch Saturday's Strictly. Strictlywatch will be appearing as soon as possible.

And now! Live! Live!! LIVE!!! from BLACKPOOL!!!! It's the Strictly Come Dancing Kicking Out Craig Special!!!!!

OK, so when did the Blackpool episode become all about Craig? Why was I not invited to that meeting? I'm pretty sure I was free. I realise that Craig is FROM BLACKPOOL, in case anybody missed that, but I'm from London, and I'm pretty sure that if (if? what am I saying? when) I am on Strictly, I would get pretty short shrift if I went around saying "The thing is I'm FROM LONDON, I need to stay IN LONDON, I'm the LOCAL GIRL and so you've got to KEEP ME IN THE COMPETITION UNTIL LONDON BY WHICH I MEAN THE ENTIRE COMPETITION BECAUSE IT'S HELD IN LONDON SO I HAVE TO BE HERE FOR THE FINAL, AND I CAN'T LOSE ON HOME TURF BECAUSE I'M THE LOCAL GIRL SO BASICALLY I HAVE TO WIN THE WHOLE OF STRICTLY COME DANCING BECAUSE I AM FROM LONDON" - well, I might try it. But I don't think it'd work.

On the positive side, at least it meant that we all knew that having managed to get Craig as far North as the competition would plausibly allow, we could all jump in the minibus back down the M60 and pretend we didn't notice that he was still in the service station buying mints. Yeah, Craig: you went home and you stayed home. You danced last; you were last on the traditional VT where everyone has to say "I am having the most amazing time and I can't let my partner down"; you were last on the leaderboard (and a bonus, please, whoever did the maths and gave you a Cha Cha Cha this week which was bound to be the worst dance you could possibly do); you were going down. Even you knew it, judging by your surprise when Tess said "And you don't want to be watching from home on the sofa next week, do you Craig?" Craig's mouth said "No, of course not", but his face said "er, Tess, didn't you get the memo? I'm getting knocked out this week. The whole country knows. Flavia's booked a holiday."

Anyway, there were other copples, so let's get reviewing shall we?

1. Ricky and Natalie, tango. I TOLD YOU! I TOLD YOU THEY WERE SHAGGING! WOULD ANYBODY LISTEN TO ME? NO, YOU NEVER DO! WELL MAYBE SOMETIMES YOU DO. BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY SHAGGING, IT WAS ON THE VT AND EVERYTHING AND THE DAILY MAIL SAYS THAT HE'S BROKEN UP WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND, NOT THAT I READ THE DAILY MAIL, BUT I CAN'T HELP WHAT GOOGLE GIVES ME, and that might explain why Ricky looked like he wanted to vomit just before he went on for his tango. Not the Daily Mail, and not because shagging Natalie would make you puke, far from it, but he'd clearly been up all night in a seedy Blackpool B&B with Natalie, doing the horizontal tango, and probably had to stop horizontal tangoing at intervals to take calls from his angry ex-girlfriend, who wants that, not me, well maybe the shagging part, but not the ex bit, and then around four in the morning he remembered that he was first on the dancefloor, and even though Craig was going out this week so everybody else got a bye, it is twice the size of the dancefloor at home, with better lighting and more people in the audience, and he was on first, he had already thought of that but there is was, undeniable, and he had knackered himself with shagging, and this was not a good dance-friendly strategy, and he had about three hours before he had to be in make-up. Oh dear, Ricky. Still, great tango. Not worth making yourself sick over.

2. Natalie and Vincent, quickstep. Kind of mean putting her on after Ricky and Natalie. She bounced around the stage like a hot cocktail sausage in a mouth.

3. Jade and Ian, jive. Another meeting I wasn't at: the one where they gave Jade a jive outfit that looked like a hanky dipped in lime TicTacs and then wrapped around a very small pair of pants. Anyway, for all that we've been hearing all week about Jade's jive being excellent and how amazingly she dances it FOR A TALL PERSON (drink!) it was... good. But nothing special.

4. Ali and Brian, Viennese Waltz. I knew immediately that this was going to get four 10s. Not because it was all that wonderful, but because I always find waltzes and Viennese waltzes tedious beyond belief, and the more tedious I find them, the higher they score, and this was a total snore-fest. 40 out of 40!

5. Ricky and Erin, salsa. I cannot recall a thing about this and had to scrutinise the whole of the internet very closely before I remembered that it was even a salsa. Not a good sign. They went into the dance off but can't have been too worried because it was getting rid of Craig week. And Craig went. In Tess's room after the dance, Ricky claimed that "I put the E in entertainment but I don't take the P out of professional", proving that he really should not be allowed to write his own scripts.

6. Laila and Anton, Paso Doble. They dance to 'Layla', personally I think that Craig should have danced to Layla, just to confuse everyone on the way out. Anyway. Actually Laila's Paso Doble was very good, but I am no longer liking Laila. She is whingey. Also, every time I see Anton I want to weep, because I know that year in year out I wait for Bruce Forsythe to die, I mean retire, and when he does, they will replace him with ANTON, which is a bit like taking a break from having diarrhea just in order to start puking.

7. Phil and Katya, rumba. This was the dictionary definition of "not his dance" and a triumph for those of us (everybody alive, surely) who think that the rumba is a fucking ridiculous dance. Essentially, Phil did all the moves very nicely, but looked throughout like he was about to piss himself laughing at any moment. Some people may argue that this is not catching the spirit of the dance; others may feel that it is catching the spirit of the dance to perfection. You, as they say, decide. Incidentally, my crush on Phil is extending to Katya, and every time they show training footage of them I spend a lot of time looking wistfully at her practice outfits and wondering if I could conceivably go about my business of being a full-time author whilst wearing a uniform of hotpants, legwarmers and stiletto heels.

8. Chris and Ola, foxtrot. Oh my god. It's good. He can actually dance. Well, this is going to screw everything up. (Stomps off to redraw her Strictly wallchart.)

9. Craig and Flavia, cha cha cha. JUST LEAVE. LEAVE NOW. DON'T EVEN DO THE DANCE. Oh, OK, if you insist. It's horrible, as you might expect, but even I am shocked when Alesha says "I can't believe Zoe's gone and I had to endure *that*". Alesha is very good at nice, but her nasty makes me feel frightened and slightly ill. Just before leaving the dancefloor, Craig does an extra bow, as befits someone who knows they are about to get knocked out, but he has clearly mistaken himself for a John Sergeant style loveable goof type, whereas his dancing is just rather unpleasant.

Do you notice what they did there? They had Craig going on last. Does that tell you, something, Craig? DOES IT?

Then the stuff they have to do to fill the time before the end. I had high hopes for this, seeing as it's BLACKPOOL, BLACKPOOL BABY, and even though I don't know why I am supposed to be excited by BLACKPOOL I have been told to get excited often enough and now I am kind of excited, despite having been to BLACKPOOL and knowing full well there is precious little to get excited about unless you have a thing about chips, drag queens or rain.

So WOO! WOO! LET'S GET IT STARTED! WITH! Oh, a group Viennese Waltz from the pros. Yawn.

Moving swiftly on, the next group dance is a swing dance. YES! That's BETTER! Because it's that day before Remembrence Sunday, the Strictly dancers go to some barracks and dance with soldiers, and I am ready to be bored and sneery but that's because I haven't seen the soldiers yet. As it turns out I have a latent fantasy about going to a barracks with lots of soldiers, where I am wearing a small skimpy outfit with lots of sequins on it, and I dance jive with the soldiers, and then they do things like lift me horizontally across lots of soldiers, and I kind of like it, and they can totally do this again even if it isn't the most appropriate way of marking the death of millions in the Second World War.

The group jive itself is quite fun at first, particularly notable for featuring former champion, the divine Jill "queen of the jive" Halfpenny, who is beautiful and dances as well as the pros in the opening sequence, and I am all happy and enjoying it, and then BRUCE COMES OUT ONTO THE STAGE AND STARTS SINGING AND DANCING.

NO. NO. NO. WHY DOES NOBODY CONSULT ME, EVER? THIS IS AN EPIC NO. The only thing that can be worse than this is a few years down the line when ANTON will be singing and dancing, and the very thought of this puts me in an even WORSE mood. Meanwhile the divine Jill Halfpenny is still on stage and I can't see her because the camera is on Bruce doing some kind of unspeakable soft shoe shuffle. NO.

After Bruce, 81, and hot on the heels of last week's BeeGees (Robin, 60, and Barry, 63) comes Rod Stewart, 64. Another meeting nobody invited me to, clearly. I know I'm being ageist but does Stricty have to be retirement home for people who were mostly famous before I - a woman in my thirties ie actually middle aged - was born? I'm quite intrigued as to whether it was the Strictly producers or Rod himself who decided that his singing absolutely had to be accompanied by his wife and Strictly also-ran, Penny Lancaster Stewart, doing a lengthy and not very good show-dance, demonstrating exactly why it is that we, the Strictly audience, are very nostalgic about Jill Halfpenny and not at all nostalgic about Penny Lancaster Stewart.

And then it's all over. Guess who goes home this week! Guess! Go on, guess! Read back over the blog, there are clues.

Watch it all, or just bits thereof, here.

Over on his brilliant blog, Robert Hudson does a lovely job of publicising next month's Firestation Bookswap, in which he is appearing with Richard Asplin. I think it's going to be a particularly good one this month, if you can make it, which is not to diss the particularly good ones we've had so far, but it's too late for you to make those. Also, audience members have started baking and bringing cakes. Rumour has it there is going to be parkin, there will almost certainly be cupcakes and I am hoping for a repeat of last month's flapjacks. (Those links all take you to the bakers thereof.) That's in addition to cakes from varied family members of Scott's, and I might even get some brownies made myself this time. I aint promising anything. But you never know.

Oh yeah, and books. Bring one, swap one, talk about lots. You know the drill.

Tickets here.

Oh my god! OH MY GOD! I can't believe I managed to stay spoiler-free! From the comments I thought the big news was the tiff over Ricky and Erin's dance, and something about Jade's eyebrows! ALI AND ZOE! ALI AND ZOE! WT MUTHA-F-ING F???

Although, to be scrupulously honest, at the end of the dances I couldn't even remember what Ali and Brian's dance had been, and her foot bruising appeared to have extended as far as her eye makeup, and I hated Zoe and James's samba, and she was dressed as an ice-dancing cocktail waitress at the Rainforest Cafe, so that may explain it, but still, people: CHRIS. LAILA. CRAIG, FFS. Why can't I make the capital letters bigger on this thing? CRAIG!!!!! WHO IS VOTING FOR THESE PEOPLE?

I can't really bring myself to summarise the rest of it. I can't even remember the rest of it. Jo was terrible in the first one and kept falling over, so her departure was what we in the trade would call THE CORRECT DECISION, and Ricky W's foxtrot in the second was one of the all time great Strictly dances (though seriously, a point off from Craig RH because he doesn't like his toes? Pull yourself together, man), and I am still in love with Phil Tufnell and concur with Katya that he is sexier than Antonio Banderas, and I do wonder if the bearded BeeGee is regretting his decision in the 1970s to sing falsetto because it didn't sound great then and now it sounds like he is being strangled, although not as bad as Dave Arch, his Fabulous Singers and his Wonderful Orchestra mutilating Ever Fallen In Love as if the song had shat on their mother's bed and they were out for revenge, and I was disappointed that the pro-dance stripper dance didn't feature Natalie, though Aliona does a great job of dancing like a really scary stripper, and did I mention I watched Flashdance on DVD in Dorset, a film which makes being a stripper look like really good fun, and we're veering off the point now, but ALI AND ZOE, PEOPLE. ALI AND ZOE. I go away for FIVE MINUTES and look what a mess you make of things! CAN WE GET A BIT OF HEAVY ORCHESTRATION GOING HERE PLEASE?

Mumble mumble watch again on website mumble mumble.

No Strictlywatch this week either. This is the price you pay for me going away for ten days to a cottage with very dodgy (read: largely non-existent) television reception and finishing my novel. I will leave it up to you whether you think it was worth it.

(If you're very lucky there will be a double Strictlywatch Special halfway through the coming week. If you're not quite so lucky I'll just watch the dances, fast-forward through the links, and come out four hours later dazed and confused and covered in sequins and be unable to voice my feelings through the haze. If you're not lucky at all, my PVR won't have recorded any of it, and I'll be reduced to watching Jedward on Youtube instead. I wouldn't rule the last of these out either way.)

I finished my first draft today. (Subject to minor corrections before I send it to my agent.) I want to be honest here about what finishing was like because I didn't feel how I think I was supposed to feel.

In short: it was horrible. I was panicking so much as I typed the last chapter that I had to keep running out of the room. My hands were shaking so much I could barely get the words "The End" onto the screen before I slammed my laptop shut. I then spent the next hour as a total wreck and was only able finally to calm down by sitting with a pencil and paper and writing things down like "I am capable of trying to imagine that I can believe that it is OK if I write a bad book and it doesn't make me a bad person." (I do see the funny side of this.) 10 out of 10 for reading comprehension if you've realised that the above convoluted piece of therapy-speak means that, right now, I don't believe that it's OK if I write a bad book, and do I think it makes me a bad person.

Weirdly, I keep thinking about Robbie Williams's recent bizarre appearance on X Factor. I think that Robbie Williams and I have a lot in common. He's obviously a huge attention-seeker as well as an artist (of sorts) who is passionate about his work, but equally he's crippled with an overwhelming fear of failure and public humiliation and he's unable to control his anxiety.

Me too, me too, me too. I am the Robbie Williams of books, and I haven't even had people heap scorn upon my "Rudebox" yet.

I don't remember finishing the first draft of Gods Behaving Badly being this bad. I think I was excited and proud of myself just for getting to the end. I had no idea if it was any good or not, I didn't have particularly high expectations for it, there was no reason to imagine it would ever be published or read by more than a handful of people.

This time, I still don't know if it's any good or not, but I have a very high expectation of my book being published, and of it being read by thousands - maybe tens of thousands - and, if GBB is anything to go by, hundreds of thousands of people. There's a series of bigger and bigger hurdles in front of me and I could fall at any one. First my agent. Then the publishers of GBB. Then my friends and family. Then the reviewers. Then the world. It's like a gigantic game of Play Your Cards Right, with Bruce bloody Forsythe hosting, and enjoyment of my book as the stake. Will it be "higher! higher!" or "lower! lower!"? I reckon GBB scored around a Jack. Chances are this one is going to be lower.

I keep telling myself that I can't pin my self-worth onto how well this book is received, and what I should really be proud of is the fact that I was willing to take a risk, the huge risk of writing another book and it not being as good and people not liking it, which is honestly the hugest risk I can think of. But the truth is I haven't just pinned my self-worth onto this book, I have superglued it on, and if I need to learn the lesson, with this book, or with the book after this one, or the one after that, that it's just a book and what matters is the endeavour and there is no shame in failure and no matter what happens I am still a worthwhile human being - well, I think it's fair to say that I'm going to be learning the hard way.

And this was just the first draft. God knows what happens once I try to actually make it good.

Since Sunday night I have been by myself in a cottage in Dorset. It's my favourite place to write. It's perfect because it's so beautiful, peaceful and quiet, and because there's absolutely nothing else to do. That's an exaggeration, of course. Today I read some of the weekend papers, and went on a walk to the sea, and spent a full hour and a half lying on the sofa watching the light change outside the window. Tonight I might read a book or watch a DVD or both. But there's no mobile phone reception; only dial-up internet, which means I can't access most websites without waiting for hours; and nobody I know within miles. I have already written more in the last two days than I usually manage in a week.

I don't talk much about my writing on this blog. It's something I'm quite sheepish about. As a successful author, I feel like I should really be better at it. Authors I follow on Twitter publish daily word counts I can only dream about. Meanwhile most of what I write ends up in the bin. People keep asking me how the new book is coming and what it's about, and I get coy and don't answer, and they probably think it's because I am protective of my great idea, when actually it's because I am on my fifth attempt at a new novel since publishing Gods Behaving Badly. I don't know if and when this one might founder on the rocks too.

I do know that I am very close to the end of my first draft. This is further than I have got with anything since GBB. In writing terms, or in my writing terms, this may not be as big a deal as it sounds. If it were a journey, the first draft is just deciding on the destination and buying a map. I still have to bloody get there, but at least I know where I'm going.

I'm scared. I'm slightly in shock that I might be on the brink of actually managing this again, a second novel. I don't know if it's any good. I am contemplating new careers where I don't have to put my soul on the line every damn time. But I'm not about to stop now.

In Dorset it's cold and dark and I can't get channel 5. What's it like where you are?

No Strictlywatch this week I'm afraid - I'm driving to Dorset for a week tomorrow and I don't have time to watch it before I go. Dorset, long-term readers will know, is the land of DARK and COLD where much of Gods Behaving Badly got written, and I'm hoping for similar results on Untitled Project 2. Dorset is also the land of no broadband. Yes, people, if there is blogging it will be on dial-up. So slow I may as well come round your houses individually and write my blog straight onto your computer screens. Strictlywatch will be back next week. Until then... Keeeeeep dancing!

Over on the excellent The Medium Is Not Enough TV blog, blogmaster MediumRob is currently running a competition to win one of two Amazon Vouchers worth £25 each. The question to answer to win the competition is "David Tennant or John Barrowman? And why?" And my answer can be found here below... (Contest open til October 25th, please do enter but please don't win.)



- Hello, I’m looking for a man.
- Well, you’ve come to the right place. That’s all we do here. You might say that men are our speciality.
- I know. That’s why this is my favourite shop.
- Thank you. So what kind of man are you looking for today?
- Um… I’m thinking Scottish?
- Scottish, very good. Very on-trend. Scottish men have been all over the catwalks this season.
- And I’m planning to wear heels, so he’d better be tall.
- We have some very nice men in the 5ft 10 range.
- Hmm. No, I think taller.
- 6ft plus? That will narrow things down a little.
- And I’d like him to be an actor. I’m going for a dramatic look.
- Special occasion?
- I’m thinking of marrying him.
- Oh, well in that case I can see you’d want someone to stand out from the crowd. Well, we have our basic Scottish actor range, and then our Premium range.
- What’s the difference?
- The Premium range are better looking and more famous. But they are priced accordingly.
- It’s a one-off purchase.
- Of course. So do you have any preference on what kind of actor?
- I like science fiction. Television science fiction, in particular. For a family audience?
- Gosh. I’m not sure how many of those we have in stock. Oh, yes, actually more than I thought. But I’m not sure if we can meet all your criteria. For example, here’s Douglas Henshall but he’s only available in 5ft 9 ½.
- 5ft 9 ½?
- His imdb page is very clear on that extra half inch.
- I’m afraid that’s a little short for me.
- I quite understand. I can offer Patrick Stewart, who is a little taller, and while he isn’t Scottish exactly, he has a good Celtic name, and he’s a timeless design classic.
- Tempting. I do like his voice, and he looks great in that Starfleet uniform. How timeless is he exactly?
- He’s currently 69 years old.
- Hmm. That’s a bit too timeless.
- I see. Well in that case, if your requirements are non-negotiable, it’s David Tennant or John Barrowman.
- David Tennant or John Barrowman?
- That’s all we have left.
- This is tricky. Will you be getting any more stock in?
- Not til Christmas, which is when we’re expecting our new Doctor, but he isn’t Scottish, and imdb doesn’t even list his height, so we’re anticipating that he might be quite short.
- I was hoping to be married by Christmas. Right. Well, in that case… God this is hard… and I hate making impulse purchases, but I’ve got to get to the bank and it’s closing in ten minutes… OK. Barrowman.
- Barrowman? Are you sure?
- Yes. No. No. Tennant.
- Tennant?
- Do you offer a refund or exchange if I change my mind?
- Unfortunately not.
- Tennant then.
- Definitely?
- Yes. Absolutely. He’ll go better with my handbag.
- Tennant it is. If you wait here, I’ll just go and get him wrapped.
- No, it’s OK, I’ll wear him home. Thanks very much.
- My pleasure.

From time to time I get sent a book by one of my lovely blog readers who also works for Bloomsbury Publishers (hello Bloomsbury! And hello other publishers who read this blog. You could send me stuff too, if you liked.) I don't always like the books that I get sent, in which case I keep schtum about them - I may as well just say in big letters I THINK I WRITE BETTER THAN THIS, which is emphatically not cool - but other times I do like the books, so the decision to write about them is very easy, and sometimes I sort of like and sort of dislike them, which is trickier, but I have decided to try my hand at "the mixed review" and so step forward two books from the Bloomsbury Group list at Bloomsbury, 'Henrietta's War' by Joyce Denys, and 'The Brontes Went to Woolworths' by Rachel Ferguson. Both of the authors are dead by now, which makes being critical about the books rather easier.

The Bloomsbury Group is Bloomsbury's take on Persephone Books, a list which - as someone pithily described it to me - might have been Celia Johnson's bedside reading in Brief Encounter. In other words, lost early-20th century novels, female-oriented, intelligent but none too demanding. (Incidentally, from a Googling point of view, naming your imprint The Bloomsbury Group is not very helpful, as, inevitably, the first six million search results are all about Virginia Woolf, who was both intelligent and very demanding in every way.) There's a whole bunch of them with pretty matching covers in cheerful pastel shades, as per above.

Of the two I read, both had a fair bit of charm. 'Henrietta's War' was the more inconsequential, a collection of wartime columns featuring pleasantly illustrated, uplifting anecdotes from the Home Front, written in the form of letters from a middle-aged woman to her friend who is away at war. Fun, with barely a hint of wartime darkness, and nothing that EM Delafield didn't do far better in her Provincial Lady books. This isn't really Bloomsbury's fault, as EM Delafield isn't in the least bit forgotten, and thus can't be rediscovered and reissued in a cheerful pastel cover, and one must read something when one has exhausted one's supply of Delafield. Don't, I beg you, read this in preference to Delafield, but if you have a soft spot for wartime anecdotes and are something of a completeist, you will enjoy this.

'The Brontes Went to Woolworths' is an altogether stranger beast. Written and set in the 1930s, it's the story of an impossibly over-imaginative family of mother and three daughters, father sadly deceased. They keep themselves cheerful with invented stories about various London figures who they pretend are their friends, but their cocooned fantasy existence is threatened, in order of weirdness, firstly by their new, genuine friendship with one of their imaginary friends Judge Toddington; secondly by the encroaching, jealous misery of the youngest sister's governess; and thirdly by the ghosts of the Brontes, who turn up towards the end of the book for no good reason that I could tell, and have very little to do with Woolworths. It's distinctly odd and structurally the book is all over the place and makes almost no sense. On the other hand it's brilliantly atmospheric about the 1930s, lively and honest and quite revealing about the class system, the role of women, the problem of sex, and all kinds of other topics you might be surprised to find in a book so apparently light and slight. It also invokes the aching nostalgia that always comes when reading books written between the wars, when the author thinks that the worst is over and has no sense of the darkness to come. I recommend this one more strongly, as a bizarre but enjoyable period piece, particularly if you already have an interest in this historical era.

Overall I'm not sure either book was strong enough to get me seeking out more books from the Bloomsbury Group range, but it's a good idea, and the books are well-priced (£5.99) and very appealingly produced, making particularly nice gifts, so hopefully some of the other titles in the range live up to the presentation more convincingly.

Let's talk about Strictly Come Dancing. But quietly, OK? I was up til gone 3am at a friend's book launch last night and I am enfeebled. I watched SCD on the sofa this morning, huddled beneath a tartan blanket, with the volume turned right down, unable even to take notes because it would have involved moving my hand (I am never sure whether I should admit to taking notes as it does seem like overkill - scrawled biro on the back of an envelope shrieking WHY IS OLA DANCING IN AN OUTFIT MADE OF PIECES OF PARLIAMENTARY RED TAPE AND FOUR GOLD SEQUINS? - perhaps I should be able to remember this stuff unassisted.) On the positive side, I did learn a valuable lesson today, which is that if I am watching SCD recorded, I can fastforward through all of Bruce's links, having a good half hour off the length of the show and increasing its funniness by 25%.

Happily, I have now recovered enough so that the pitter patter of my keyboard does not evoke a troupe of obsese centipedes tapdancing on my brain, and thus, we may proceed to the copples.

1. Ricky G and Erin, Jive. Now, I was very hungover, so I got a little frightened at the beginning of this when Ricky told the audience to shut up and then started shouting something about jam, but fortunately that was soon over and the dance began. It was definitely a jive, and Ricky's hot potato mouth was back, and most welcome. As for his feet, as the judges said, he only danced one step, but it was a good step, and I liked it. There was some business with a comb. Mainly I was wondering if I could stomach a banana yet (no, as it turns out: it took a full additional half hour.)

2. Jade and Ian, Viennese Waltz. Nobody ever mentions Jade as a potential contender, and the fact that her Viennese Waltz is the best dance of the night seems to have gone unnoticed by everybody other than me.

3. Ali and Brian, Jive. As a close watcher of Alien Headed Brian with his amazing Pepe le Pew bounce, despite all the tabloid reports about their relationship and all the nudge-nudge wink-wink on the show, I have come to the following conclusion: he and Ali have no chemistry whatsoever. In fact they increasingly resemble Pepe Le Pew in one of his doomed love affairs with a cat.

Visual aid: Pepe le Pew in doomed love affair with cat:



Meanwhile the dance was way too hard for Ali, and if Brian wants her to win it I think he needs to bring it down a notch or two, as she's still probably the best dancer in the show.

4. Jo and Brendan, Viennese Waltz. All memories of this waltz have been wiped from my brain following a particularly tedious episode amongst the judges where Craig told her she danced like a bush kangaroo, Brendan marched her off the stage, and Bruce stood shouting at Craig for several seconds like a headmaster trying to tell off a heckler in Sixth Form Assembly. Shall I just say every week that they should replace Bruce? They should replace Bruce. Tell you what, "retire" Bruce, take Alesha off the judging panel, give her Bruce's job, and put Karen Hardy in place as the new judge. Just a suggestion.

5. Zoe and James, Jive. Now, Zoe dances beautifully, and gets great marks, and even brings out her little girl for the training vid, although I keep thinking it's a boy, but a cute boy, so that's sort of OK, but they ended up in the dance off after this, in the traditional Strictly early-to-mid season "I can't believe she's in the dance off" moment, and I don't think it helps that - and I have totally watched LOADS of Strictly so I can say this will full confidence - it didn't seem to have much jiving in it. Quite a lot of bits where Zoe sticks her bum into James's crotch, though. I wonder whose idea that was?

6. Ricky W and Natalie, Viennese Waltz. Remember what I said about Ali and Brian having no chemistry? These two look completely in love. I don't read the tabloids, did I miss something? Anyway, Alesha gave this (very nice) Viennese Waltz a 10, which threw me somewhat, and also made me think a 10 from Alesha aint worth much as she's not expert enough to notice the mistakes the others pointed out. Did I mention Karen Hardy? Karen Hardy. Doing lovely work on Choreography Corner in ITT. The 10 knocks Jade off the top spot on the leader board and Jade is never mentioned again.

7. Craig and Flavia, jive. Flavia is dancing in big blue sequined pants, and Craig's in a matching tie. Gentlemen, take note: NEVER match your tie to your lady's underwear. Also, never forget how counter-suggestible the Strictly Come Dancing audience is. Craig's attempts at jollity are like Eeyore doing the can-can, but this dance doesn't deserve the total pasting it gets from the judges, nor the rock-bottom-of-the-leaderboard marks, and therefore Craig gets saved by the public, whilst in the meantime...

8...the combined might of everyone in Wales is not enough to rescue Joe and Kristina's horrific jive - as chance would have it, hugely over-complimented and over-marked from the judges - from taking a short-cut through the dance off and into oblivion. The fact that Joe and Kristina still get to, ah, dance in private is probably some consolation to them both.

9. Natalie and Vincent, Viennese Waltz. At an outside guess, if I'd got enough sleep last night I probably wouldn't have cried when Natalie said that she wanted her dad to think she was a lady, especially as she doesn't have her mum any more. If I'd known her dad would turn out to be sitting by the side of the dancefloor with a face so much like a bulldog chewing a wasp that he was actually chewing, and not so much as betraying the first glimmer of a smile, I might not have wasted my tears, or possibly I might have cried a whole lot more. No wonder she always tries so hard. I like this waltz, but I like the beading on Natalie's bodice even better. Strictly in rare nice dress moment.

10. Anton and Laila, jive. Training shows them hugging and saying they love each other. Remember: ANTON IS NOT A RACIST. All week they've been saying that this jive is rubbish, so why they choose to do it to Bowie's Modern Love - first rule of Strictly, NEVER allow our fantastic singers, Dave Arch and his wonderful orchestra to maim Bowie - and have Laila dance in horrible fake-looking hair extensions and a pair of grotesque black fringed culottes is anybody's guess. The jive is rubbish.

11. Phil and Katya, Viennese Waltz. I have unexpectedly developed a huge crush on Phil Tufnell. This is a worry. I can no longer comment with any fairness on any of his dances as I am too busy wishing I was Katya.

12. Ola and Chris, Jive. While this is on, I am looking forward to the next dance, because whoever it is I think it will be better. As it turns out, this is the last dance of the night. God knows what it was like.

Our extras for the night include a pro group samba, my most hated dance, aside from the rumba, and some of the other ones that I hate, which looks stupid enough when the pros are doing it, so expect *much* more stupidity and grumbling from me next week; Spandau Ballet performing Gold, or rather a bloated Tony Hadley singing Gold remarkably well while the one who used to be in Eastenders and the rest of them stand next to him pretending to play unplugged instruments; and YES! YES! YES! Flavia and Vincent doing a Waltz variation on an Argentine Tango. If Strictly every week consisted of just Vincent and Flavia dancing for two and a half hours, I would still watch, and the advantage would be: no Bruce. Hey, there's nothing wrong with making suggestions.

Dance off, Joe goes, the end. I really don't know how to make these last bits exciting.

Watch it all here, or you can probably get the good bits on You Tube if you are in foreign parts.

(Typo alert: I just wrote For Richer, For Pooper, which would be a very different type of book.)

For Richer, For Poorer is Victoria Coren's memoir of playing poker, from childhood games with her brother's friends to winning a million dollars in the European Poker Championships. It is also a more general memoir of growing up, and of losing her father.

(Oh, FFS. It is impossible to be interesting while writing book reviews. How does anybody else manage it? This is why I never review books. Anyway.)

Is it any good? Yes, it's bloody good. It will make you desperately want to play poker for a start. This may not be a good thing, as gambling destroys lives etc etc, but if you are anything like me you will have got to the end when Coren finally explains the rules, having got very confused for the whole of the rest of it (I still don't get the stuff about blinds) and then gone onto a poker site where you can play for free, but not even played one hand because you got too scared, so called your friend who also read (and loved) the book, agreed to schedule a poker night, except we're only going to play for buttons, only we're not sure how many buttons everyone should start with, and neither of us understand the blinds so maybe we won't have them, nor do we understand pot odds but maybe that doesn't matter if neither of us do, but we will wear visors and put cigarettes behind our ears even though we don't smoke, and we will invite our friends to join in even though one of them is a maths teacher and can probably therefore count and is thus at an unfair advantage, although maybe she can explain pot odds, which would be helpful, and then the whole discussion descends into what food it is appropriate to eat during poker (chicken wings, we think, and maybe pizza).

(Hmm. This may be the other reason I never review books.)

Anyway, the reason that you will get obsessed with poker reading this book is that it is all about poker, which may sound obvious. You spend almost the entire book at once poker game or another, whether it's in someone's front room, at a seedy London club, in a TV studio, or in Vegas. You get the impression that Coren never does anything else (and if you follow her on Twitter this is an impression that will certainly be reinforced) but that can't entirely be true as I know how long it takes to write a book (ages) and she's written this one, and another one, and maybe others I haven't noticed. Also newspaper articles and so on. But describing yourself writing books is boring, whereas describing yourself playing poker - the wins, the losses, the nerves, the adrenaline, the excitement, the sleep deprivation, the people called things like Huckleberry Seed and The Sweep - is a lot more fun. It's also a lot of fun to read, especially with Coren as your warm, honest, deadpan guide, and you can, and do, start playing along in your head, and next thing you know you are seriously considering buying a packet of cigarettes just so you can put one behind your ear.

As it happens, while I did think it was great, I didn't enjoy For Richer, For Poorer quite as much as I enjoyed Once More With Feeling, Coren's book (with Charlie Skelton) about making a porn movie, but that was one of the funniest books I had ever read, which is a tough act to follow. For Richer, For Poorer (I have not managed to successfully type Poorer on the first attempt once this entire review) is less funny, but it's more thoughtful and more moving, and you get a far better insight into what kind of person Coren is (bright, self-deprecating, sensible, or at least as sensible as someone with a massive gambling habit can be) BUT you do not get a photograph of a man with a pixelated semi-erection, wearing only an 18th century wig, on a break from shooting a porn film, reaching for carrot batons at a buffet table next to the fully-dressed son of a vicar.

In conclusion: if you love poker, would like to love poker, don't love porn, or have already read Once More With Feeling, you should absolutely read For Richer, for Poorer.

If, on the other hand, you love porn, would like to love porn, don't love porn but do love funny books which really aren't as yucky as a book about making porn sounds, and in any case there's a whole bit in the middle about poker anyway - read Once More, with Feeling.

If you love Victoria Coren, would like to love Victoria Coren, or just have plenty of time on your hands, read both.

If you're my mother, read neither.

Hope this helps.

According to tonight's It Takes Two, this year's costume theme is not (as I guessed) prostitutes from Westerns, but 1970s and 1980s musicals.

Anybody spot that? Anybody?

Of course, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is a 1980s musical so maybe they are just being coy. I mean, check out the trailer:



I think they actually did that bit where they rip off their balldresses to dance in their knickers in last week's pro dance.

(A longer, higher quality version of the trailer is available here.)

Thoughts on Robbie's comeback appearance.

1. That song is truly terrible.
2. I'd still shag Robbie Williams, but I'd be concerned that he'd keep breaking off to introduce himself to my bedroom furniture, and
3. Somebody needs to stop taking drugs, pronto.

I didn't watch Strictly Come Dancing last night, I went from drinks at Sketch instead, a bar where the toilets are individually positioned in giant eggs, inside which they play you a recording of someone apparently reading aloud in Czech.

Just thought I'd mention.

I did, however, watch it this afternoon, and thus, casting all ado to the wind, let's kick in. Theme tune yadda yadda, Bruce yadda, Tess monosleeve odd hair yadda, off we go.

1. Zoe & James, Foxtrot. Zoe stepped out in a lovely white dress complete with neck scarf, perfect for hanging herself with if dancing with James gets too much. They were dancing to that song which by law has to appear in every romantic comedy ever made, the one that goes "This! Will! Be! An everlasting love." The dance was elegant but a little lifeless. Am I suffering from Strictly fatigue? Usually I love Zoe. Len gives her a 9. Insanity. Tess calls Zoe the 'dark horse' of the competition. Drink!

2. Chris & Ola, Salsa. Training footage horrifying, involved Chris humping a pillar. Dude, no. Out on the floor, Ola is wearing a pink pussy pelmet. This is giving sex a bad name. However I am slightly ashamed of myself for enjoying this salsa as much as I did because I know it was only because of the dancing faces. If I was on the panel (and yes, I am available) I would soon become known as the bonkers judge who gives everyone an extra point (at least) if they do good dancing faces. Afterwards Bruno says Chris dances like Bob the Builder - uncannily accurate - and Craig complains that he minces too much. Bruce replies "Don't you talk about mincing" thus demonstrating himself to be a homophobe as well as a racist. New presenter, please.

3. Lynda & Darren, foxtrot. In the training footage, Lynda is honest and endearing about her body anxieties, not helped by being made to dance in a hideous dress the colour of weak tea with a back that looks like busted corsetry, and when it comes to judging time Alesha excellently says that "I don't want to see a 5 ft 10 stick insect, you're Lynda Bellingham" hurrah! Sadly in between Lynda dances a dance which sees her get the boot after the dance off, and sees me wondering (no!) whether I have got bored of watching people dancing badly (no! no!) Alesha mentions Lynda's "emotional journey", Lynda herself talks about her "journey" to Tess. If we were playing the drinking game we'd be drunk already. Am beginning to wonder whether "journey" isn't code for "looks bad in the outfits". A 7 from Len. Len is clearly having one of his weird marking nights, oh dear.

4. Ali & Brian, salsa. Very complex choreography in this one, and Ali does a good job I think, but to be honest I just watch Brian. I do like watching Brian dancing the salsa. I have not yet figured out why his nostrils look so much bigger on TV than in person. This will preoccupy me for some time, I'm sure. Ali is dressed, as so many of the dancers are this season, as a whore in a Western. This is not a good look. 8s all round.

5. Jo & Brendan, foxtrot. They dance to Crazy, and what with the crazy camerawork and Jo's crazy long feathered dress I can't see enough of the dance to muster up any opinion about it at all.

6. Natalie & Vincent, salsa. Natalie dances the entire dance with her fists clenched, but nobody seems to mind as, as usual, she has cranked this one right up to 11. I love her and Vincent as a couple, she brings out his humour and tones down his sleaziness, and as usual his choreography is bang on. Love the bit when she dances alone. Definitely wakes me out of my Strictly stupor.

7. Joe & Kristina, foxtrot. Joe beings his dad, who is also his coach, into training. His dad is a full foot shorter and a full foot narrower than Joe and looks like a Chuckle Brother dressed as Nick Cave. Joe & Kristina dance to Feeling Good, and I am feeling pretty good as this is a huge improvement on previous weeks, and Kristina is knockout, the hardest-working dancer on the floor. Craig's comment is that he can't see any improvement. I worry as to his memory.

8. Laila & Anton. Clearly there has been a meeting about this and nobody is mentioning the P*ki thing. IT NEVER HAPPENED. Laila kisses Anton's cheek as they walk own the stairs. IT NEVER HAPPENED. The training footage is all about how well they are getting on. IT NEVER HAPPENED. And then they only go out and dance the best dance of the night. I wonder if Len is going to have a break out a 10 after overmarking Zoe so wildly but he gives her a 9 as well. There is a lot of wriggle room in a Len 9.

9. Ricky Whittle & Natalie, salsa. Watching the training footage just makes me want to go and watch his Paso again. There's a totally gratuitous bit in training where he lifts his top up for no reason. Bloody hell, that's a bod. Then they come out and do a salsa that I really like, with sexy hip moves and great out of hold stuff and a backflip. And Len and Alesha both flip out. They hate it. Len loathes the backflip and Alesha gets very angry and says that it's "cheesy, not cool", that he is "better than that" and he's "no Andrew Castle". I wonder what it is like for Natalie Lowe, Australian dance champion several times over, to have Alesha Dixon, ex of Mis-Teeq, diss her choreography. They all give them 8s anyway.

10. Craig & Flavia, foxtrot. They are dancing to 'Sometimes When We Touch', a song so cheesy it has its own rind. I am, as usual, feeling extraordinarily sorry for Craig, who is still dancing like a rabbit caught in headlights, except that afterwards he says that it was his best dance ever and so I have had to accept that it isn't nerves and he is just a bit shit. He and Flavia end up in the dance-off, inevitably, but live to dance another day. My advice to Craig is that it will do him no harm whatsoever to smile. During the dance ideally, but before or after would do. Len gives him a 7. I worry what jetlag is doing to Len.

11. Jade & Ian, salsa. It's all about the headgear. Jade's got a headband on for the dance, in training she's got half a dozen hats, Ian chooses inexplicably to give a training interview in a flat cap and scarf, and then, in a very frightening move, Jade takes Ian onto the running track and he wears a hideous sweatband around his head. No, no, no. Jade's running in a tough field but her salsa is great. She does have a tendancy to flail a bit, but then again her legs are eight feet long.

12. Ricky Groves & Erin, foxtrot. These two, purely on the basis of personal chemistry, are shaping up to being my favourite couple. I love the fact that Erin can't stop laughing in training no matter what Ricky does. This is actually a very nice foxtrot, particularly given that Ricky prefers dances where he can ham it up. Also particularly given that Erin seems to have a lock of her hair superglued to her forehead to approximate a fake fringe: nasty. For no apparent reason Len makes another dig at Ricky Whittle in the judging, and gives Ricky Groves a somewhat undeserved 8. I have no idea what's going on with Len tonight.

13. Phil & Katya, salsa. Phil has has knee surgery and Katya has had her hair crimped so they are both dancing with a handicap. The choreography is very odd, particularly the opening section where Phil wriggles his bum while Katya just stands there. But I love Tuffers, and so does everybody else. Free pass to next week.

While waiting for the results, there is a rather lame tap dance interlude, a very lame appearance from a 13-year-old singer whose presence is surely unrelated to the fact that her godmother and (vacant-looking, uncoordinated) backing singer is Amy Winehouse, and an unpleasantly schmalzty and dull bit of VT where all the contestants say that they want to win, not for themselves, perish the thought, but for their dancing partner / family / fans / dog / etc.

And then Lynda goes home.

Sigh. I have a bit of Strictly Fatigue this week, I've got to admit it. I need to watch Phil Tufnell do the Cha Cha from week 2 again.



That's better.

The whole show, and individual dance clips, can be found on the official website.

I love the new Doctor Who logo. There, I've said it. It's the Tardis! It's got a light on the top! It's the right colour! It's totally old school! Even the font is 1970s-futuristic. FFS, the thing's in flares.

So we're all agreed? Yes?

So, to Brian and Kristina's salsa class.

The evening did not begin promisingly. Owing to our ignorance of traffic on Chelsea FC match nights, we got stuck in gridlock on Chelsea embankment for almost half an hour, immobile behind a car containing the most grotesque couple you can imagine. She was wearing a red and white knitted beret-style hat, he was in a black fedora, and they were eating each other's faces. And just when the snogging could not get more repulsive, she disappeared down into his lap... NO. NO. NO.

Finally we arrived, half an hour late - that very half hour spent watching the milliners dogging - and were greeted by the following sign at the entrance to the club:



Classy joint.

Went inside, full of trepidation. I was expecting a huge venue filled with hundreds of avid Strictly fans practising their cross body leads while Brian and Kristina demonstrated, ant-like on a faraway stage.

Not a bit of it. It was a smallish nightclub, with a few dozen people inside, maybe three times as many women as men, the guys all lined up along one side of the room and the girls taking turns to dance with them. In between the two lines were Brian and Kristina explaining what to do, and when we stumbled into the room, baffled and late, Brian took hold of my friend and showed her the turn himself.

First squee of the night.

So we joined in, and it was easy to catch up, with Brian giving clear and amiable instructions, and Kristina helping out demonstrate the moves. And I got a turn dancing with Kristina! Second squee of the night! She said that I was "very good", but then she is used to dancing with John Sergeant and Joe Calzaghe.

Brian, I'm sure you'll be keen to know, is taller and more handsome than he comes across on TV and in photos, with an extraordinarily sexy body. It is not shallow to notice this or point it out if the person in question is a dancer. Kristina is absolutely tiny and beautiful. They are both lovely. Brian's patter is more studied, a sort of relentless but harmless flirtatiousness (I got flirted with - third squee of the night) heavily leavened with cheese, but all delivered so good naturedly that you can't possibly object. Kristina is quieter, shy and demure until she gets dancing, and incredibly sweet and charming. I can see why their dance partners have a habit of falling for them. I'd definitely shag Brian if he was my dance partner and I could get away with it, and I'd probably shag Kristina too. Like I say, it is not shallow to point this out. I know that my readers demand rigorous research into these matters.

After the dance class, Brian and Kristina sat on the stage and did a Q&A about various aspects of Strictly and their careers.



The Q&A was diverting - it was enjoyable hearing them speak for longer than the few seconds you get on TV, getting some idea of what kind of people they are, and fun to get an insight into how the programme works - though nothing they said was particularly surprising (it's a good show to work on, all the dancers get on well, only moment of controversy being that Brian wishes the dancers got credited for their choreography on the pro dances). Someone was cheeky enough to ask Brian about whether he and Ali were a couple, and he was both suggestive and cagey. Actually, having seen how much his flirtiness is part of his act, I wouldn't be that surprised if there was nothing going on at all bar a very effective publicity stunt, or even if Brian was gay, but I'd also say that his appeal was very clear and I could also believe that Ali would go for it. So I can't help out with the gossip, sadly. The most revealing moment was when someone asked the apparently quite dull question of what the dancers eat to stay in shape, and Kristina said "Nothing". She elaborated to clarify that she basically doesn't eat. It's very sad to think that a woman who is essentially an athlete is under such pressure to be thin that she can't even nourish herself properly.

If you are thinking "hang on now Phillips, 'essentially an athlete?'" that's because you were not there last night and therefore didn't get to sit and watch Brian and Kristina perform their show dances. They did four dances: a salsa, a foxtrot, a rumba and a mambo, all in different costumes and not on stage but in the middle of the dancefloor with everyone sitting around the edge. That means they were dancing only a few feet away from me, with nobody between me and them. The intimacy of the setting meant that during the dances they could look at the audience members directly in the eye. (Losing count of the squees now.)

The dancing was incredible. Kristina, in particular, is an international dance champion and is one of the most amazing movers I have ever seen. I wish I had a photographic memory and could recall everything they did, but there was one move in the rumba which is unforgettable: Kristina drops to the ground in the splits, and Brian picks her one of her feet and lifts her, without her bending her legs, so that eventually she is standing doing the splits vertically. I watched the dances with my mouth wide open in pure jaw-dropped awe. This wasn't cheesy, look-at-the-sequins, ironic appreciation, this was the real thing. The skill they have is unbelievable.

Then, final squee of the night, we got to have our picture taken with them. We were second from front of the queue but even so there was a little wait, during which a couple, who were audience members like we were, insisted on doing a long and elaborate and massively inferior dance in the hope of attracting the attention of Brian and Kristina, but which only succeeded of reminding me of the amorous hat people in front of us in the traffic jam. It was excruciating, rather as if I rocked up to hear Haruki Murakami do a reading and then decided to read from my own novel to the people waiting to get their books signed. Please, no.

When we got to the front of the queue I totally lost my cool. I took a terrible, out-of-focus picture of my friend with her camera phone because my hand was shaking so much, and then when it was my turn I couldn't stop gushing about how amazing they were and what a privilege it was to see them dance in such a small space, and wishing them best of luck in the competition, and and and and and. God knows what else. It's a bit embarrassing really. I don't think you're actually supposed to squee out loud. Here is the photo, I managed to shut my mouth for long enough:


(Kristina's outfit is, in fact, a harem-panted jumpsuit which nobody but she could wear without looking like a tropical heffalump).

And so off we went. Completely brilliant night. As I can't support Joe and Kristina no matter how lovely Kristina is (he is just too lumpen), it's now team Ali & Brian for the win. I can't help it. They were just too lovely.

*I'm not sure if I need a badge or something.

One of the downsides of the new all-in-one Strictly show is that if you happen to go out on Saturday night and miss it, as I did, and you want to remain spoiler-free, as I did, you can't go online, brush past Twitter or poke your nose into any newsagent (so much for the Sunday papers) until you've watched the entire behemoth on Sunday. Which I now have, so with fourteen couples dancing we'd better get a bleeding move on...

1. Ali & Brian, dancing the quickstep. It's only the first week that all the couples have danced together and already I'm thinking that only a hideous accident can keep Ali & Brian out of the final. A hideous accident, or possibly backstage shenanigans: Ali and Brian are apparently dancing horizontally as well as vertically, as it were, which could either get nauseating (good for them, bad for us), or end in a horrifying mid-season break-up while they are forced to dance together cheek to cheek while hating each other (bad for them, good for us.)

2. Already I can't remember what order they danced in. Bloody hell, 14 couples are a lot. Help me out here, Google. Oh, Lynda Bellingham, dancing the Paso Doble with Darren. Now, I've just watched it in the dance off where she did it much better - taking a leaf out of drama queen Ricky Groves's book and putting it all in the face. This is the year of the dancing faces, praise be! First time round it was rather limp. You can't afford to go limp when you're dancing to 'Devil Woman' - "Beware the devil woman, she's going to get you from behind". Indeed.

3. Chris & Ola, quickstep. He buggers it up completely. Lucky he's cute.

4. Zoe & James, Paso Doble. I love watching Zoe dance. There's something really grown-up and womanly about her style. I wonder if James could be persuaded to wear a Matthew Cutler mask for the duration of the series?

5. Rav & Aliona, quickstep. This is horrible. Aliona has chosen "We Go Together" from Grease and choreographed a routine that makes High School Musical look like Carmina Burana. If anything they dance it even worse in the dance-off, after which a clearly gutted Rav gets knocked out. Neither have done anything to make themselves popular this series and I wonder whether Aliona will be discreetly shelved next series a la Hayley.

6. Natalie & Vincent, Paso Doble. Love Vincent's choreography, and Natalie's determination conquers all. I still can't figure out whether she's any good or not.

7. Craig & Flavia, quickstep. They must have been bricking it because Craig plays his joker very early this series ie bringing his beautiful new wife in to see him train. Anyway, Flavia is put in a terrible dress a la I Dream of Jeanie, and Craig bottles this completely, and maybe the wife thing helped because I felt really sorry for him after this. He clearly has a massive problem with nerves.

8. Ricky Whittle & Natalie, Paso Doble. OFF THE HOOK. If you only watch one dance this week, watch this one. No stripper tendencies on show from Nat - perhaps last week was a one-off - although her dress was so grotesque it would have been a relief if she had taken it off.

9. Jade & Ian, quickstep. One advantage of there being so many couples this year is that it'll take weeks for all the dross to go, which means people with a lot of potential who aren't quite hitting it yet, like Jade, will have a while to improve their dancing before they're too much at risk. This was pretty good, and she'll get better.

10. Joe & Kristina, Paso Doble. They're shagging too, apparently. I only mention this because there is almost nothing interesting to be said about the dance. He sort of walks it instead of dancing, and she takes her skirt off, turns it into a cape with Calzaghe written on the back in gold sparkles, and then puts it back on again. Less good than that sounds.

11. Laila & Anton, quickstep. All the way through I'm convinced that this is one of those dances I am going to find boring but that the judges will mark high because technically it's on the money. Bingo. Starting to wonder whether Anton has a clue how to choreograph for someone who can actually dance.

12. Jo & Brendan Paso Doble. Jo is actually fairly graceful, but she can't dance, and Brendan tries to make the most of this by pretty much carrying her around the entire time. It must work, because she stays in.

13. Phil & Katya, quickstep. Katya is an extremely pretty girl in an all-American way (despite being Canadian), and has a huge smile, but having studied her rehearsal footage, It Takes Two interviews and backstage comments, I can report that she is incredibly scary and super, hyper, ultra competitive. Phil is probably faking needing knee surgery just to get a day away from her. Anyway, although he made some mistakes dancing it, purely on the basis of the choreography this was actually my favourite quickstep.

14. Ricky Groves & Erin, Paso Doble. Oh, Ricky. How you are brightening this series of Strictly. Shouting and stamping and that bumfluff on your face, dancing faces dancing faces dancing faces, and a splendid cheesy grin moment halfway through. Can he dance? Actually he can, which is a bit of a surprise. And this is genius stuff. If you're only going to watch two dances... well you know what to do. Verily, tonight has been a Tale of Two Rickies.

Pro dances: fine, nothing special, including a very under-rehearsed-looking guest salsa troupe, and a visit from Andy Williams, who is marooned on an island in the middle of the dancefloor, and makes Bruce look young. Then a bunch of ballroom dancing children give their verdicts on the celeb dancers. This is mostly entertaining because they all look like identical blonde aliens hatched from one fake-tan-coloured pod.

Then there's the Dreaded Dance Off, Rav gets the boot, and that's it for another week! Keep dancing!

Speaking of which, tonight I am going to a Strictly live event with Brian & Kristina teaching a salsa class! Bring it on! The competitors are dancing salsa next week so I will be able to compare my moves directly with those of Ali and Joe (presumably they are not appearing tonight, though you never know.) Will I be Fab-U-Lous? Or a Dis-ARSE-ter? Only time will tell...

Watch the whole programme on the BBC website where you can also catch footage of all the dances individually.

I hate this advert.

"Get really terrific service finding something you want, and then fuck the shop over because you can get it more cheaply on a website where they don't need to pay the overheads of shop rental, display items and helpful salespeople who know what they're talking about. Eventually the shop will close down and the helpful salesperson will lose his job, and your high street will be a desolate wasteland, and the only place left on earth to shop will be dixons.co.uk, and you'll be screwed because next time you want a TV there won't be a display item or a helpful salesperson, but who cares, because you got a cheap TV."

If you want to shop online, shop online, but don't use the real world to browse. You're only getting it cheaper because you're stealing expertise.