'Love Island contestants don't belong on Strictly – they aren't celebrities'

12 July 2023 , 20:17

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Zara McDermott says tenants shouldn't have to choose between their pet or their home (Image: SWNS)

Strictly Come Dancing is due to return to our screens for another year of glitz and glam. But this year, the BBC has broken a big rule in the signing of a new contestant.

Zara McDermott was recently announced as the first Love Island contestant to take part in the show. BBC bosses reportedly believe that having the 26-year-old reality TV star on Strictly will be good for bringing in younger audiences as well as furthering her TV career.

An insider said: “Zara is the perfect signing for Strictly, not only is she beautiful and glamorous but she is hardworking and will take being on the show very seriously.”

But it doesn’t matter how hardworking she is, Love Island contestants do NOT belong on Strictly.

Does inviting Love Island contestants on the show mean we’ll be forced to say that each contestant has been pied off instead of voted off?

Love Island's Haris spills on unaired row between Zara and Tanyel

'Love Island contestants don't belong on Strictly – they aren't celebrities'

Zara found fame on Love Island (Instagram/zara_mcdermott)

(@zara_mcdermott/Instagram)

Will we be hearing if their pro dancer is their type on paper? Or will choosing to Charleston be putting all of our eggs in one basket?

Either way, Love Island contestants belong with a beach ball, not the glitter ball.

Until 2014, the BBC had a strict policy banning reality stars from the show, a rule which they broke by inviting The Only Way is Essex’s Mark Wright and then Made in Chelsea’s Jamie Laing, who came in fourth place in 2020.

But Strictly have attracted some major names in the past. From Emma Bunton and Carol Voderman to Ed Balls, the BBC show used to sign people we genuinely wanted to see do the tango. So why have they felt the need to scrape the barrel this year by inviting fame hungry, so-called ‘influencers’ most of us have never heard of?

What used to set Strictly apart from every other reality show on the telly was that they recruited genuinely relevant and interesting celebs who we looked forward to seeing get better every week.

It now seems they’ve followed in the footsteps of Dancing on Ice, who has previously featured Love Island contestants Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu and Kem Cetinay. But Dancing on Ice has dropped in ratings by a million every year since 2019.

It’s clear no one is interested in watching D-listers who get paid to pose, preen and promote the latest health tea. Strictly is better than that.

Instead of humouring wannabe celebs who just want to nab a spot on primetime BBC and increase their Insta following, the show needs to focus on recruiting genuinely interesting, relevant and intriguing celebrities that the general public actually want to see cha-cha-cha-ing with our fave pros.

Love Island contestants are not celebrities and Strictly deserves to maintain its status as the nation’s favourite dance show.

We’ve already watched these people doing the horizontal tango on prime time telly. We really don’t need to see them butchering the real tango on a Saturday night.