James Jordan is back for this week's Strictly the Truth to give his verdict on week eight of Strictly Come Dancing. The former professional dancer expressed his thoughts on the dance-off – which saw Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Lauren Oakley be voted off after competing against Angela Rippon and Kai Widdrington – as well as the scoring throughout the night, which James branded as "bordering on insanity".
Chatting to HELLO! on his show, Strictly the Truth, James began by discussing Krishnan's sad exit after performing a samba. "If anyone was going to pull it off, it was him. He still did a great job. He's still entertaining. I still love them as a couple. I love him.
"I believe he is what Strictly's all about. Gutted to see him in the bottom two. I thought the public would have still voted for him, even though he was bottom of the leaderboard, I don't know why they didn't. I think it's perhaps because he had the samba, which in my opinion is the dance of death. It's really difficult to make it look good."
Check out what James had to say about week eight in full below…
Elsewhere on Strictly the Truth, James spoke about the scores from the judges and expressed his amazement that couples like Nigel Harman and Katya Jones, Ellie Leach and Vito Coppola and Layton Williams and Nikita Kuzmin did not receive full marks. "Craig gave Angela and Kai an eight. So he's saying Ellie and Vito got the same standard as Angela and Kai. It's ridiculous. It's bordering on insanity."
"And the same with Nigel and Katya… He gave Nigel and Katya an eight. So, I just find it a bit baffling. And when the public comes on Twitter and says 'I don't understand'. I don't understand either, I don't get it."
James continued: "For me, I think the standard this week was so high. Well, just give out the tens! If they deserve tens, give them tens because it was such an amazing show this week. I thought it was fantastic. And actually, you're doing them an injustice because people are sitting at home and they want to see these tens. Don't leave it until Blackpool just because it's a done thing that we don't give out tens too early.
"Just mark what you see. And that's what annoys me about the judging panel. They're not marking what they see. And that's why this is Strictly the Truth."
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© Guy LevyDiscussing Ellie and Vito's rumba – for which they received a score of 35 – James added: "I've been on the show, I've watched all the dances, I've commented every year since I've not been on. There has not been a better rumba. This was exceptional, it was next level. That's as good as it's going to get unless you have someone go on there who is a professional Latin dancer. It won't get any better than that so it should have been a ten. They were totally undermarked."
James also spoke about who could be in the danger zone this week after Angela and Kai found themselves in the bottom two for the second time in week eight. "We have to put Angela and Kai in there. I don't know how many more slow dances there are that they can do.
© Guy Levy"In a way, I'm really happy that she's got to Blackpool because, you know, she has been fantastic. She's still brilliant. She's still fantastic. Any other year, she would have made the final. Any year that I was on the show, she would have easily been in the final.
Every Strictly Come Dancing winner so far
- 2004: Natisha Kaplinsky (partner Brendan Cole)
- 2004: Jill Halfpenny (partner Darren Bennett)
- 2005: Darren Gough (partner Lilia Kopylova)
- 2006: Mark Ramprakash (partner Karen Hardy)
- 2007: Alesha Dixon (partner Matthew Cutler)
- 2008: Tom Chambers (partner Camilla Dallerup)
- 2009: Chris Hollins (partner Ola Jordan)
- 2010: Kara Tointon (partner Artem Chigvintsev)
- 2011: Harry Judd (partner Aliona Vilani)
- 2012: Louis Smith (partner Flavia Cacace)
- 2013: Abbey Clancy (partner Aljaž Škorjanec)
- 2014: Caroline Flack (partner Pasha Kovalev)
- 2015: Jay McGuiness (partner Aliona Vilani)
- 2016: Ore Oduba (partner Joanne Clifton)
- 2017: Joe McFadden (partner Katya Jones)
- 2018: Stacey Dooley (partner Kevin Clifton)
- 2019: Kelvin Fletcher (partner Oti Mabuse)
- 2020: Bill Bailey (partner Oti Mabuse)
- 2021: Rose Ayling-Ellis (partner Giovanni Pernice)
- 2022: Hamza Yassin (partner Jowita Przystał)
- 2023: Ellie Leach (partner Vito Coppola)
"But that just shows you that they're getting more and more trained dancers. It doesn't mean that the professional dancers have got worse. It just means that the celebrities are getting better standards. So yeah, she's done amazing, but I still think that she's going to be in the danger zone."
© Guy LevyHe added: "I think also, Annabel or Angela? I don't think Bobby, and I really hope not Nigel, because I think that would be a travesty, and it's kind of going that way because the way the judges don't hype him up like they do everyone else, I think he deserves that."
