Although a minority, male pros and female celebrities have held most of the two top spots on the judges’ leaderboards so far in 2024. This reflects a wider trend in which male pros dominate on almost every performance metric.

However, female pros win overall when it comes to Strictly’s most important statistic, and we think they can add to their tally in 2024.

First routines on Strictly have ranged from the sublime (Zoe Ball & Ian scoring 35 in Series 3) to the ridiculous (Quentin Wilson & Hazel scoring 8 in Series 2).

In this week’s blog, we crunch the numbers to see which specific scores for a ‘first routine’ have most often been the precursor to an eventual place in the Final.

That’s a wrap for Series 21 and as we sign off here are 7 fab-u-lous and noteworthy facts and stats from last night’s Final.

See you same time and place next year (or before if you are enjoying our daily Advent Calendar and Quiz Question) and thanks as always for reading!

Each year the Strictly Final provides partnerships with the opportunity to reprise two of their previous routines; allowing us to see how far they have progressed over the course of the competition.

In this week’s blog we look back at the ten routines that saw an improvement of 8 (or more) points.

Last night Claudia praised Layton & Nikita for achieving the 3rd ever Week 2 score of 36, but according to our stats, Layton & Nikita are actually the 4th couple to do so in SCD history. The other three couples went on to be Finalists in their Series, but none of them became champions. Does this trend mean Layton and Nikita are destined for the final? Let’s discuss…

We hope you’ve enjoyed sharing the exhilarating 13-week 2022 Strictly journey here with us at strictlydb.com – for us, it’s been a brilliant starting series for our labour-of-love project and we look forward to many more to come, so a big thank you to all our users. We couldn’t leave this Series without highlighting some of the most significant moments from last night’s fantastic Final – so here are 6 fabulous facts worthy of note.

Who is the greatest Strictly Come Dancing Champion of all time? We took a look at the data and created a Champions Leaderboard to see if it would reveal the answer…

In the early series each contestant who made it to the Final got to perform every dance style. The introduction of Speciality Dances from Series 8 meant finalists would have to skip at least one style. In this blog we will reveal the styles which have been skipped the most, and those which have never been skipped.