Former Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer Ola Jordan is concerned for Chris McCausland after he received his lowest marks to-date from the judges last weekend.
The comedian, 47, is the BBC dance competition’s first blind contestant and had been considered an early contender to lift the famous glitterball trophy.
Performing a Samba to Stayin’ Alive by The Bee Gees with pro partner Dianne Buswell last weekend, the couple struggled with the judges awarding them just 26 out of a possible 40 points.
While they managed to avoid the dreaded dance off on this occasion. Jordan - who served as a pro from 2006 until 2015, winning in 2009 with news presenter Chris Hollins - fears it might happen on another occasion for two specific reasons.
Speaking to The Standard on behalf of Mecca Bingo, she explained how two things might hold Chris back.
She said: “(He) is not an amazing dancer, let's not forget that. His footwork is quite good, but he didn’t have a great dance this week.
“The Samba is hard anyway, but obviously, it was shown that it was his weakest dance, but that doesn't mean that he's not going to be in the final.
“In previous years, people have had weak dances, and they were in the final, so that doesn't mean anything.
“People love Chris, so they’re going to do everything possible to get him through, but if he gets more dances like that then he isn’t going to be in the final.
“If that dance was a one-off that it's not a great dance for him, then he might be there.
“He's still not in the same league as Sarah [Hadland] or Jamie [Borthwick] as a dancer, but people just love him, and people are rooting for him to do well.
“If he's going to get a decent dance, people will always vote for him so he might be in the final.”
Moving onto the second thing, noting recent reports about Chris missing the live tour because of his stand-up career, Jordan added: “With the tour, very often people who don't do the tour don't do that well in a competition; that's a well-known fact before, but not always.
“There have been people in the final that haven't done the tour so let's hope that's not the case. Let's hope that we can get him through to the final.”
Strictly Come Dancing returns on Sunday at 7.20pm on BBC One.
