AIBU to think the criticism of Josh Widdecombe has become yet another unedifying pile on

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Josh Widdecombe isn’t great on Strictly but I’m not sure he warrants the massive pile on it’s become. Half the problem is the odd arrangement of presenters, not Josh himself. It seems like another ridiculous social media fuelled bandwagon. Or am I being unreasonable?

He's fine. It's totally ridiculous!

Yanbu. It's very unnecessary and mean.

Johannes is worse IMO. Get Josh upstairs in the Clauditorium!

It’s not nice to see but it really is an odd choice from the BBC and people are naturally going to question it. He just isn’t the right fit. I feel for him as a person, obviously nobody wants to embark on a new venture and get slated but it’s prime time Saturday night tv and obviously people are going to have an opinion.

Hard agree. Johannes is far far worse, he's a wooden box.

I did think there was at least one awkward delay with them presenting. Think 2 was better but its not his fault. I feel a bit sorry for him.

Surely anyone going for strictly presenter knew they would be under huge scrutiny and receive backlash ? I don’t agree with any nastiness though. I’m sure it will settle. Tess and Claudia got it too back in the day

I like Josh. I thought he and Emma were great on Saturday night and he was really funny. JoJo was better this week. Not sure what the problem is.

I actually thought he was much better tonight. I think he should be “upstairs”, Emma downstairs and jojo should go back to dancing!

johannes was much better this week. Emma is holding it all together. Josh is just an awkward bystander

I don’t dispute that there are issues with the new line up and with Josh in particular but (a) he’s not that bad and (b) I’m not sure why we need the weekly “he’s still shit” stories in the likes of the Daily Mail (although I perhaps shouldn’t be surprised).

Yes agree with this. Emma is a very capable presenter, she’s one of those where you just feel comfortable watching knowing that she will hold it together and keep control even if something goes wrong. Jojo less so on the presenting but I think he is quite good upstairs. He’s a gusher so it’s nice to see him greet and compliment/console the dancers. I just don’t get why Josh is there. He’s such an odd choice for this role. I do feel bad for him but the new Strictly presenters were always going to be a hot topic so I don’t think it’s wrong that people are discussing it. Maybe they could be kinder.

None of them have the screen presence to be the main hosts on a show of that scale sadly. It’s making it weird. Couldn’t the BBC afford any big names?

I also keep thinking that when The Last Leg returns (if he’s still on it which I’m sure he will be) Alex and Adam will absolutely roast him about this new role and all the shit he’s been getting🙈

He was better this week as was Johannes. The problem is Emma is so good at live TV the other two look poor in comparison. Josh’s short stature also makes it quite visually jarring. Clearly his height isn’t his fault but generally TV involves people of very similar heights because it’s far easier to film them. You don’t notice this until there is one person either way taller or way shorter and it just doesn’t look right.

But newspapers always review big TV programmes and if their reviewers think something is shit why not say so? TV is so subjective anyway .. you can love it, I can hate it and neither of us is wrong

It’s really not the presenters’ fault. Emma and Josh are both great. I always liked Josh. Emma is good at what she does.
Johannes - not well placed. He should be dancing instead.

However the problems with Strictly are bigger than who presents it. I switched it on yesterday for a bit of dancing in the background when I was cooking. Every time I stopped to watch someone was talking - an actor I don’t recognise talking about how his dad is his best friend and whatnot… Who cares? Where is the dancing?! I’m not interested in people’s personal stories. And I don’t want to see the prof dancers making friends with celeb’s extended family, sightseeing, or eating.

And it’s all too noisy and over the top now - the couple’s ballroom dancing is squeezed between group show dances, professional only dances, presenters made to act, judges’ dances. It has completely lost its way and is not the show people used to like anymore.

There isn’t a talented enough presenter to save that.
I watched something called Hypothetical instead (that show had passed me by until yesterday, JW is presenting it) and enjoyed it much more.

These aren’t TV reviews. They’re sensationalist stories about the “outrage” of viewers, confecting a “scandal” that doesn’t exist.

He did the right thing switching off from social media. I feel for him. He needs to be up in the old Clauditorium.

How do you know it doesn’t exist? How does the media know it does? It’s all just speculation but my point is it happens with all TV

I don’t actually watch SCD, however surely the point is that amateurs are having a go at dancing. To watch that and get upset them some of them aren’t very good seems a bit odd.

I've listened to the Parenting Hell podcast since it started (2020) and one thing I know about Josh is that he's a genuinely lovely person. He had issues with alcohol and anxiety a few years back, and he's done so well to overcome them. I know that he deactivated his Insta and I hope he's not reading the criticism.

For this reason I record it on Sky and start it about an hour later. I fast forward through all the chat and just watch the dancing and the scores. I catch up eventually and then have about 45 mins of having to watch it live. Next week I’ll start it a bit later.

I dunno, it's a bit shit for him, I'm sure, but it feels like it's part of a bigger backlash against mediocre white men being gifted plumb jobs that they clearly aren't up to.

The trio doesn’t work. It’s not the fault of Josh (or Emma, or Johannes) but that’s the way it is imo