With some miserable winter weather hitting the UK, I thought that for this week’s blog I would offer a little bit of ‘Strictly sparkle’, by highlighting some of my favourite Strictly routines that have featured colourful face paint.

Happy Strictly Halloween everybody! A terrifying ‘trick’ here where we look at the 6 partnerships who received their lowest score of the Series in Halloween week. Look out for Part 1, where we’ll share the more ‘tantalising’ Halloween dances that saw couples earning their highest score.

Happy Strictly Halloween Eve everybody! A tantalising ‘treat’ here where we look at the 9 partnerships who achieved their highest score of the Series at Halloween week. Look out for Part 2, where we’ll share the more ‘tricksome’ Halloween dances that saw couples earning their lowest score. Enjoy!

Here we look at the ‘danger data’ (overall bottom 2 and elimination placements) for the seven dance styles being performed for Halloween Week 2023. Which dance styles are more ‘trick’ than ‘treat’?

Strictly have announced 2023’s Movie Week dances, so we’ve had a look at the archive to see if we can spot any interesting patterns in the previous 148 movie-themed performances.

It’s Blackpool Week and we’re all looking forward to a sensational return. But does dancing at the iconic Tower Ballroom put an extra spring in the steps of our couples? Do they perform better in the home of ballroom than a BBC studio? We took a look at the numbers to find out…

The answer is ‘Probably not’ but for a little bit of fiendish fun, we’ve checked how past performances of this week’s Halloween dances have scored with the judges in previous spooky specials.

Saturday night brings the twelfth Halloween Week Special to the Strictly ballroom. In preparation, join with us in celebrating past frightening favourites with our Halloween Hall of Fame.

We were sent a brilliant message this week by fellow “Strictly Statistician” James. He pointed out that after last Saturday’s show, the perfect 10 paddle had been awarded 992 times. This means we’re only eight away from seeing the 1000th being awarded!

Tyler and Diane’s Charleston topped the Judges’ scores last night but looking at the data perhaps this isn’t too surprising – Charleston is the second highest scoring dance in Strictly history topped only by Final Week Showdances!