By scoring 40 for her American Smooth, Tasha becomes the seventh celebrity to achieve a perfect score for this dance style, and only the third to do so before a Final.

Interestingly, previous perfect routines have not always had perfect outcomes for the celebs who performed them.

Week 7 marks the near midpoint of a Strictly series which must mean it’s time for our annual quick stats and facts review.

Here we explore six facts and stats from the first seven weeks of the show – some you may know, others you may not and one or two will probably surprise you, as they did us!

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.

On Saturday night, Karen Hauer will become the first female professional dancer on Strictly (and only the third in total, after Brendan and Anton) to reach the milestone of performing one hundred routines with a celebrity partner on the show.

In celebration of this impressive accomplishment, let’s take a look back at some of Karen’s most memorable routines on the show.

As a Christmas Eve present to you, in this week’s blog (our final for this year) we look back at the ten professional dancers have who achieved the highest average score from routines performed in Christmas Specials.

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.

Semi-Final Week and who will triumph? We’ve got Layton & Nikita’s Champions’ Charleston versus Ellie & Vito’s Crowd-Pleasing Couple’s Choice; or will we see a Quintessential Quickstep from Bobby & Dianne topped by a Virtuoso Viennese Waltz from Annabel & Johannes?

Forget Claudia’s dance debrief – this is our StrictlyDB Semi-Final dance pre-brief!

It is often said that ‘a week is a long time in politics’, but the same can be true in the world of Strictly Come Dancing.  Angela & Carlos became only the twelfth partnership to be eliminated from the show one week after receiving a ‘ten’ from the judging panel.

In this week’s blog we look back at each of the other eleven partnerships who suffered this fate.