91Èȱ¬

Well, well, well, show 9 and what a furore. In a shock result, early favourite Cherie Lunghi was voted off the show. The lovely, leggy actress is an icon for ladies of all ages, who have watched and admired her grace, elegance and fabulous figure.

For a mother in her fifties, she is nothing short of an inspiration and will be sadly missed by all, but while breathtaking in the ballroom her Latin left a lot to be desired. So despite a big improvement on Saturday she lost out in the dance-off to Lisa.

Following a less than sizzling Samba, which failed to impress the judges or the public vote, a stunned Lisa found herself in the dreaded bottom two. But under pressure she pulled it out of the bag and head judge Len saved her to dance again.

The highlight of the night had to be raunchy Rachel's red-hot Rumba. By heck it was hot! She scored a record-breaking 39 points - the highest score of the competition. She's worked so hard, taking on board the judges' criticisms and triumphing with a mind-blowing performance.

Rachel's three tens trumped Austin's all too short-lived victory, with a tantalising, testosterone-filled Tango. With which he wowed the audience and gained a massive score of 38 from the judges. I was most impressed by the fact he spent all week growing his facial hair, especially for his Latin Tango character. We honour commitment on this show and Austin's got it in bucket loads.

Talking of commitment, in a controversial statement about John, judge Arlene is said to have called him lazy in training.

May I beg to differ, his weekly hours in the training room (not just time spent reading the papers) would dictate otherwise. We have the film footage to prove it. Of course I feel for the man - how unfair to persecute him for being popular?

The public have the absolute right to vote for their favourite, and after all the judges agreed that Saturday's performance was his strongest to date and he showed huge improvement. Surely that too is the name of the game? Phew, I better get off my high horse now.

Other show highlights included Tom's sizzling Salsa. The boy is a consummate showman and never fails to entertain. And Christine too wowed with her waltz - her highest score and strongest performance to date.

I loved Bruce and his mini-me look-a-like the loveable Anton doing a duet together on Sunday's show. Bruce is Anton's icon and following a couple of singing lessons, in preparation for his big night, he was uncharacteristically nervous. But bless him, he pulled it off with aplomb, that makes two triumphs in a week for our Anton, the other being his dance with me for Children in Need.

Yes I know there were only two couples in the competition, us first and then Terry & Flavia. So the odds of winning were pretty high, (50/50 to be precise) but Terry is a popular crowd-pleaser and who knew which way it would go?

But to our delight, despite me running on empty, with an evil dose of the flu that everyone I know is suffering from, we picked up the trophy and, oh victory was so sweet. I think Anton was even more thrilled than me. In truth I was just so relived to get through. See you later...

Tess' Take - week eight

Tess' Take - week seven

Tess' Take - week six

Tess' Take - week five

Tess' Take - week four

Tess' Take - week three

Tess' Take - week two

Tess' Take - week one