Interview: Sergeant was anti-hero

Q. Do you think he twirled or was he pushed?

Well listen, I'm sure he made his own decision. The producers would be absolutely mad to get rid of him because every reality show needs a huge controversy two-thirds of the way through the series and it's thumbs-up for Strictly Come Dancing because this is their controversy now.

But you know we're forgetting something Krishnan. Ballroom dancing is actually completely bizarre. You know, all the clenched buttocks, sequins, glassy smiles.

And what the British public had done is they've subverted the whole thing. What they've done is they've found a man who's no oil painting, who's absolutely incompetent at dancing and they've made him into a sort of anti-hero like Eddie the Eagle. Fantastic - you give people the vote and that's what they've done with it.

They deserve it and it's only an entertainment programme anyway, and I think it's fantastically funny.



Q. Would it have killed the show if he'd won?

If he'd stayed in, he may well have won the show, and it would have subverted it for purists, for people who love ballroom dancing, but for the rest of us normal people, it wouldn't have worried me in the least.

Q. Have the viewers been defied here? You ignore the viewers at your peril generally in television.

Well, no, they haven't been defied because John has made his own decision to leave the show, and that's what he's decided to do. He might have even broken a leg or something like that. But he's decided to go and that's his personal decision and in those circumstances they can no longer vote for him.

But nobody's defied the viewers, no. They had a bit of fun, they voted they way they wanted to vote and now John's decided to retire. Or maybe he hasn't. Maybe he's going to get his own show and dance all the way to a million pounds. Who knows.

Q. Do you smell some inducements here?

The controller of BBC One would have been insane to remove this fantastically popular, amusing figure from the show because it's getting the show all the coverage.

I think what we do read into it is that perhaps John Sergeant was getting a rather frosty response from his fellow competitors and there was a rather frosty atmosphere when he went in for his training, which apparently was eating a bacon butty and sitting in a chair for half an hour compared to the rest of them prancing around.

I think therefore his private reason for going, I'm speculation, may well have been that he didn't enjoy the dirty envious stares from his fellow competitors.

Q. Do you remember all those debates about reality television being dead? You look at this, you look at 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here' on ITV getting millions and millions of viewers. It's back if it was ever gone.

It was never gone. The question 'is reality television dead?' is a ridiculous question. It's one of the ways we make television entertainment. It's no more dead and it's no more going away than television news. I can assure you of that Krishnan.

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