In this blog post we look at couples who were saved by the public from the unenviable position of a combined early running order spot with a position at the bottom of the judges’ leaderboard.

More often than not, the Strictly judges and viewers are in broad alignment over which two couples should perform in the weekly dance-off, however in this blog we look back at the partnerships from the last ten years who suffered a drop of at least five places on the Leaderboard once the public had had their say.

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…

Last week, 50-year old Nigel Harman became only the 10th Strictly celebrity aged 45 or over to top the weekly Leaderboard, bucking the trend for younger contestants to earn higher scores. Here we countdown the Top Ten Leaderboard-topping celebrities aged 45+ – how many do you recall and can you guess the oldest?

In anticipation of Series 21, we take a look back to December 2020 when Covid scuppered the usual Strictly Christmas Special, and instead a show was broadcast counting down the top 25 most memorable routines in Strictly history to that point, which had been voted for online by the public.

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…

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.

Can you guess which dance has seen the most Movie Week success to date? It’s Movie Week – so in anticipation of some fab dances this Saturday we’ve collected the highest scoring movie themed performances Strictly has seen into our own Movie dance leaderboard.

The judges loved last night’s Quicksteps scoring them the two highest dances of the evening!