I posted  about this a while ago after Claudia Winkelman’s daughter had her horrendous accident on Halloween which led to convolutions on the show and in the press as they tried not to give the game away. Claudia was ‘still’ with her daughter on Sunday so couldn’t be in the so-called live show. As the seriousness of the incident propelled that news out of the entertainment columns and into the mainstream, journalists were apparently compelled (or felt themselves so) to start using phrases such as ‘Claudia had to miss both shows’ in order to get around the truth, which is – SPOILER – that the two are recorded on the same night.

Celebs and even judges slip up from time to time but they soldier on with the pretence even though hundreds (thousands?) of audience members know how it really works and, if you don’t want to wait for the results, there’s a site that will tell you by about 11 pm on the Saturday.

In the grand scheme of things, this is small beer. But I’m not a fan of such unnecessary deception – a con that involves many people and requires them to collude with a pretence that has no real value beyond attracting people to a show they may otherwise not watch. And recently, three things have given me a heightened sense of concern at the implications this has for participants.

The first was when Anastacia was injured and couldn’t take part in the dance-off. As a result, ‘Twitter erupted, branding the decision “unfair”‘, presumably unaware that, rather than 24 hours in which she might recover sufficiently to perform, she had less than an hour. That’s unfair, and that’s important.

The second was when Will Young left the show suddenly. He didn’t make public his reasons and so this is pure speculation. But let’s consider Will; a sociable and well known man, and one who strikes me as a refreshingly lovely innocent who just might not have grasped the full implications of the Sunday purdah he would need to maintain for the duration of his stay. If that’s the reason, he has my admiration.

The third incident has just happened. Gorka, one of the professional dancers, was assaulted on Saturday night after the Blackpool show – the actually live show –  two teeth being broken in the attack. Unfortunately, he was dancing in the opening of the ‘Sunday’ show which led to the convoluted assertion that `The dance had been filmed in advance on Saturday night for the BBC results show that airs on Sunday evening.’ Fair enough but if that’s the case, it does rather pick away at the content of that show to the point where it begins to look like a stump, a leftover.

But supposing we accept that – what were these dancers doing going off to a club ‘in the early hours of Sunday morning’ on school night? How likely is that to be acceptable, do we think? Not at all, I’d guess. It was permissible precisely because it was not a school night. Luckily for him, it appears to have been just (just?) his teeth and nothing more serious, and because he’s no longer in the competition, no one has had to find a way of explaining how he managed to look unblemished for his supposedly live appearance.

Surely it’s time to put a stop to this deception? One that makes liars of participants (and their friends and family) who have to stay out of the public eye every Sunday until they’re no longer in the show? That asks audiences to keep secret the fact they saw both shows on the same night, just shuffled their seats and wore a different top? That leads TV audiences to believe that the whole shebang – stage set, makeup, costumes, and in this case a public venue (Blackpool Tower ballroom) – is recreated the day after it’s all dismantled? That dancers have a good night’s sleep and recovery or rehearsal time between the two shows? And worse, that people drawn in by injury or ill-health, people who may not be anything to do with the show, become unwitting victims stuck with the burden of this ridiculous pretence?

Surely it’s time the show was reformatted before an event occurs that can’t be ignored, because if that happens, it will lose its veneer of early evening innocence and with it, much public sympathy.

Update 18.30: BBC News reports that Gorka’s dance during Rick Astley’s performance, another feature of the Sunday show, was also recorded on the Saturday, which leaves very little content that is supposedly live. In addition, there are questions as to why this assault wasn’t reported to the police. I will be interested in Strictly’s reply.