Well, Strictly fans, that as they say is a wrap! Series 21 finished in spectacular style on Saturday night, bringing to a close our second year here at StrictlyDB, during which the team here have worked hard to carefully curate a Strictly super archive and share our love of the show.  A big thank you to everyone who uses the site – we’ll be back same time next year, and in the meantime don’t forget our Advent Calendar and daily Quiz continue up to Christmas.

Until then, let us leave you with seven fab-u-lous facts and stats we found worthy of note from last night’s Final.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

1. Lay-ten By Name…

Layton may not have lifted the Glitterball but he takes a different top spot as he becomes the male celebrity awarded the highest number of 10s on the show ever; his total of 31 tens was two more than Karim Zeroual who has held this accolade since his stint on Strictly in 2019.

Interestingly, the top 3 spots in the list of male celebs who scored the most tens are all Runners-up: Layton Williams (31 tens), Karim Zeroual (29 tens) and John Whaite (28 tens). The male celebrity with the most tens who won the Show is currently Kelvin Fletcher, who won in 2019 and was awarded 26 tens that year.

2. Strictly No Age Limits

Saturday night saw the youngest trio of finalists ever: Bobby at 20 years and 6 months is the youngest ever Finalist, Ellie at 22 years and 9 months is the youngest ever Champion but perhaps most impressive of all is that even the combined ages of our 3 Finalists (including Layton’s 29 years 3 months), is still six years and 8 months younger than Angela Rippon, Strictly’s oldest ever competitor.

Here she is in last night’s group dance.

3. Vito: Veni, Vidi, Vici

Vito has had the most successful first two seasons in Strictly history. Other Pro dancers have made back-to-back Finals in their first two Series on the show. Kevin got to the Final with Susanna Reid in his debut Series in 2013 and returned the following year with Frankie Bridge, but finished Runner-up both times as did Pasha who danced to the Final on his first outing with Chelsee Healey in 2011 and then again with Kimberley Walsh in 2012. Ian Whaite experienced the same fate back in Series 2 and 3, where he reached both Finals (in 2004 with Denise Lewis and 2005 with Zoe Ball) without a win.

No-one but Vito has made back-to-back Finals (in 2022 finishing top of the Judges’ Leaderboard with Fleur East) and won the Glitterball in one of these two consecutive Series.

4. Can Ballroom Bounce Back?

Only two (yes, two!) ballroom routines were awarded at least one ten this Series and both were Quicksteps – Layton & Nikita’s routine last night earned four tens (the only perfect ballroom score this year) and Bobby & Dianne’s Semi-Final performance scored ten with Shirley and Anton.

Not since the first two Series (both back in 2004) have so few ballroom dances earned at least one ten – that’s nineteen years! Whether this is due to the changing dance experience new Pros bring to Strictly or more of a focus on Speciality routines we’re not sure, but we’re definitely hoping Series 22 will bring back more ballroom brilliance.

5. More Actors Have Won, But A Different Celebrity Group Has Highest Success Rate

Actors have now won the Glitterball more times than any other celebrity group, with Ellie Leach becoming the seventh winner with an acting background.

However, actors are the largest contestant group on Strictly overall (86 celebrities to date have been actors) so in terms of the overall percentage of winners they still remain second behind Musicians and Singers (the latter have a 9% winners’ percentage rate compared to 8% for Actors) who are the most successful group of performers on the show.  For more on this, read our recent post on Celebrity Background and Strictly Success.

6. More Showdance Score Surprises

Once again – as with Series 20 – no perfect total scores were awarded to a Showdance (although we couldn’t see a single thing wrong with Bobby & Dianne’s breathtaking routine).

This is only the third time in the last 13 years that a Showdance has not scored 40 (the other time was in Series 15), but with two of these years being the two most recent Series we’re really hoping this is not the new normal!

7. Argentine Tango: Always A Perfect Final Show Performance

Closing the show with Layton & Nikita’s perfect-scoring Argentine Tango seemed a particularly apt way to draw the curtain on what has been a superb series. It was only the fifth time an Argentine Tango has been danced in a Final, however all five have been perfect performances with not a point dropped for this dance style in any Series Final to date.

Somehow we knew Layton & Nikita would continue this unblemished record and future contestants might very well want to take note of this dance style’s undeniable Final night success.