Strictly Come Dancing John Sergeant had Double the Votes of Other Contestants

by Christina 123 | November 23, 2008 at 05:03 am

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BBC faced more controversy this weekend as "Dancing Pig" John Sergeant danced his last waltz with professional dance partner, Siberian, Kristina Rihanoff with 11m viewers. Amidst accusations that Sergeant had been "bullied off" by the judges and an interview in a Sunday paper today by Kristina blaming the judges' "cruelty", it has been revealed by NOTW Show Biz Editor, Dan Wootton, that the bosses were worried as John Sergeant was receiving DOUBLE the number of votes of his fellow dancing rivals.

The BBC were forced to close their message boards as they were swamped by more than 170,000 messages. The controversy is even bigger than the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand telephone prank row, the TELEGRAPH believes.

The number of comments posted on the website is unprecedented.

It outstrips comments left following controversies such as the Baby P child cruelty case, the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand phone call fiasco and even the terror attacks of 7/7.

More than 2,300 people have complained to the corporation about the former political correspondent's departure with tens of thousands posting angry messages on the programme's website.

Hundreds have threatened to boycott the show with some claiming they will watch Xfactor on ITV instead.

The corporation was forced to close its Strictly Come Dancing message board for 11 hours after becoming overwhelmed by the number of complaints it had received.

"In my experience this is the most comments we've ever had on a topic," wrote Tom Van Aardt, the BBC's communities editor, who made the decision to shut the site.

"Forget about Brand/Ross, Baby P, the London bombings or even 9/11! We're still going through the stats, but at the time of writing [3pm on Thursday] there were almost 170,000 messages on the Strictly board."

Viewers accused the BBC of bullying the 64-year-old off the show as they called on the judges to be sacked.