Today on Weekend Edition Sunday, Philip Reeves reported on the current season of Strictly Come Dancing, the UK version of Dancing With The Stars (or, more fairly, DWTS is the U.S. version of Strictly Come Dancing).
As Reeves explains, this season features Ann Widdecombe, a conservative politician often perceived as, he says, a "noisy busybody." Now: she is not a good dancer. In fact, she is really, really not a good dancer, but she has won herself some fans based on the sheer spectacle of her bad dancing which, I have to say, puts to shame most bad dancers that have ever appeared on the U.S. Dancing.
The BBC has been kind enough to offer some video of Widdecombe, including a performance of "Wild Thing" that really must be seen to be believed.
I'm also fond of this little boogie to "Mambo Italiano," in which you can actually see her partner counting right in her face.
As much as folks are laughing at her, Widdecombe doesn't ultimately come off badly here, in terms of ... well, when it comes to "Wild Thing," you have to be a pretty good sport in order to let somebody drag you around on the floor like that. It's easy to see, based on these two videos, how she might, without any recognizable ability whatsoever, become rather popular, just as Reeves says she has -- with the odds that she'd win rocketing from 100 to 1 to 7 to 1.
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