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PIERS MORGAN
I smell bulls**t in Strictly ‘bullying’ scandal… I’ll save show from these snivelling snowflake celebs on one condition
I've had enough of celebs wrecking the magic of the show that made them richer and more famous
I’m not a great dancer.
But as with many things in life, what I lack in technique, I make up for with enthusiasm.
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Give me a dancefloor at midnight after a bottle of Chateau Latour and a few large Jack-and-Cokes, get the DJ to strike up Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones, and I’ll strut my stuff in a way that makes Sir Mick Jagger look like a shy, retiring tortoise.
However, my idea of utter hell would be dancing whilst stone-cold sober on live television in front of millions of people.
Watch Piers' explosive interviews on his Uncensored YouTube channel
That’s why I once turned down $250,000 to appear as a contestant on Dancing With The Stars, the US version of Strictly Come Dancing.
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And that’s also why I’ve always had great admiration for those famous people who dare to risk their reputations, and dignity, to appear on those shows.
Many of my former colleagues at Good Morning Britain did it, including Susanna Reid, Charlotte Hawkins and Ranvir Singh.
And they all resembled members of a weird cult afterwards, speaking with starry-eyed wonderment about the ‘sparkle’ that enveloped their souls following their sequins and stardust Strictly experience.
But that sparkle has now been shattered.
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Britain’s most popular - and hitherto ‘nicest’ - TV show has been consumed by a bullying/abuse scandal which is running so dangerously out of control that it now threatens Strictly’s very existence.
And at the centre of it lies a fundamental problem with modern-day society, which is this: we’ve become a nation of weak-willed, victimhood-wallowing, snivelling little snowflakes.
Shaking Amanda Abbington says being first Strictly whistleblower has been 'brutal and unforgiving' as she breaks down in tears on Channel 4 News
How else to explain that one of the supposed ‘victims’ is Steve Backshall, a powerfully built 6ft wildlife explorer who wants us to believe he was bullied by 5ft 2in Ola Jordan?
Backshall bleats that she was ‘rude and impatient’.
Yet this is the same man who made a TV series called ‘Deadly’ in which he faced down a Great White shark and King Cobra snake, neither of whom are renowned for their politeness or patience.
Among the other allegations is that Brendan Cole shouted at Emmerdale star Claire King during rehearsals, and lightly patted Fiona Phillips on the bottom.
I’ve watched the video of the second incident, and I’ve seen harder spankings in the Carry-on films which is why Fiona’s never complained about it and said about Brendan at the time: ‘He deserves me to do well, he’s lovely.’
And then there’s Amanda Abbington who has spent the past eight months on a self-pitying publicity tour in which she portrays herself as Lead Victim at the supposedly devil hands of Italian pro dancer Giovanni Pernice.
Ms Abbington, who from my own personal experience is a nasty little social media troll very happy to dish out man-hating verbal abuse when it suits her, has reinvented herself as a modern-day Joan of Arc, branding Pernice a mean, cruel vicious bully who all but burned her at the sparkly stake.
She was at it again in a new Channel 4 News interview where she wept about her ‘shocking and horrifying’ nightmare, without saying exactly what was so shocking or horrifying.
She even lobbed in a new hand grenade - that Pernice had humiliated her with bullying ‘of a sexual nature'.
Something she reportedly neglected to tell the BBC for its investigation.
I smell bullsh*t.
Shamefully, she even likened her ordeal to ‘fighting in the trenches’ and says it left her with PTSD. Seriously?
What kind of mind-numbingly idiotic narcissist would equate dance lessons with lying in a trench dodging bombs that are killing your mates all around you?
It’s so offensive, yet so typical of the woe-is-me thinking so ingrained in many people today who love playing the victim but, in the process, do real victims such a terrible disservice.
I don’t know Pernice, but he did once say: ‘I would love to dance with sexy Piers Morgan, to get down with him on the dance floor and see what he’s really made of. I would destroy his confidence in a week…’
I laughed at this, not least at the absurd notion that he could remotely dent my unbreakable self-confidence. But I’d expect nothing else from him if I agreed to do it.
Being a professional dancer is an incredibly physically and mentally demanding job.
It involves a lot of sacrifice, and the ability to withstand a lot of pain. It also requires a lot of determination, resilience, mental strength and will-to-win.
So, if you enter a show like Strictly, you know what’s coming. You’re not signing up for an easy, quiet life working as a library assistant.
Yet now we’re getting all these whiny brats crawling out of the woodwork to bleat about how mean and nasty their dancers were.
Most of them said nothing publicly at the time and milked all the huge attention that came their way for big financial gain and enhanced celebrity status.
But they seem intent on wrecking the magic of the show that made them richer and more famous, and which is beloved by so many millions of Britons. And I’ve had enough of it.
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As I posted on X this week: ‘Memo to Strictly Come Dancing execs: given the snowflake virus is now threatening your sparkly show’s existence, I’m prepared to save the day by being a contestant but only on one condition: that whoever trains me is so tough, brutal and uncompromising that I win.’
I’m ready to bring back the sparkle!
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