Lewis Cope’s extensive dance experience will work against him on Strictly

Emmerdale star Lewis Cope (pictured) already has several dance accolades under his belt (Picture: Elisabeth Hoff/ Radio Times / Immediate Media Company London Ltd)

It’s happened again. Strictly Come Dancing has snuck a trained dancer into its line-up of supposedly amateur celebrities, and critics are livid. 

It’s a tale as old as time. Well, as old as Strictly Come Dancing. 

Each year, one contestant takes to the dance floor and twirls around it like a world champion. This time though, one star has actually come close to being a genuine world champion. 

Without lifting the Glitterball trophy, Emmerdale star Lewis Cope already has several dance accolades under his belt. 

As a child, he learned from the best during his stint in Billy Elliot on London’s prestigious West End, and before we knew him as nanny Nicky Milligan on the Yorkshire-based soap, Lewis was on our screens in the dance competition show Got To Dance, finishing as runner-up with the hiphop dance troupe Ruff Diamond.

And in 2013, he reportedly even represented the UK in the World Hip Hop Dance Championships as part of a group. 

Any celebrity with a whiff of professional dance experience has struggled to lift the glitterball trophy (Picture: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire)

Surely, it’s completely unfair that he’s on Strictly, the competition that’s at its best when politicians are dragged across dance floors and newsreaders shot out of cannonballs?

Actually, no. If anything, Lewis is at a disadvantage. 

If history has taught us anything, any celebrity with a whiff of professional dance experience has struggled to lift the glitterball trophy even if they have given by far the best performances of the series. 

Essentially, Strictly is much more about the evolution of a contestant than the talent and quite right too. It’s not the Olympics, it’s camp fun that shouldn’t be taken so seriously.  

In 2018, Pussycat Dolls star Ashley Roberts was completely breathtaking whatever dance she performed, as you’d expect. Every week, she was by far the one I was looking forward to seeing the most because she was a professional dancer. 

I very rarely watch historic Strictly dances back but I still often watch Ashley’s show dance from the final. It was a work of art and a gear change for the show, after a string of average performances from novices before her.

Even though she was in a different league to everyone else on her series, she didn’t stand a chance of winning – and rightly so. 

In 2018, Pussycat Dolls star Ashley Roberts was completely breathtaking whatever dance she performed (Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage)

Ashley quite literally built a career from being a dancer and could probably teach the pros a thing or two. She ended the contest a superb dancer but she also started as one too. The growth was minimal even if she was breathtaking.  

Last year both Tasha Ghouri and JB Gill had buckets of dance experience and were noticeably stronger than anyone else in the class of 2024. 

Tasha made it to the final, but she was never going to win even though, like Lewis, she went into the contest as the bookies’ favourite. The Love Island star was a shoe-horn for the final but there was no beating comedian Chris McCausland who was both an amateur (and blind!) but moved with the rhythm and confidence of someone who had been dancing for years. 

That’s because the public likes a journey. 

Lewis will go from being infinitely better than everyone else… to still being infinitely better than anyone else (Picture: Brett Cove/SOPA Images/Shutterst)

We like following a celebrity whose previous dance experience consists solely of being overly enthusiastic whenever Uptown Funk plays at a wedding.

We become more attached as their performances get noticeably more confident and significantly better as the weeks progress because they’ve had the most magical time with their respective professional dancer. 

Lewis will go from being infinitely better than everyone else… to still being infinitely better than anyone else. 

It’s not impossible to win as a trained dancer though. 

Caroline Flack lifted the Glitterball trophy in 2014 after growing up in dance competitions. But at that point she was so established as a TV presenter it still came as a shock to see her dance with such skill and grace that we didn’t know she had in her. 

I’m actually more excited to see Lewis on Strictly with the knowledge he’s essentially a professional dancer than I was a few weeks ago. 

He came in as a late contender, replacing Game of Thrones actor Kristian Nairn, who was easily the star I was most excited about as he felt like such an unexpected casting. 

When Lewis confirmed he was the stand-by who would be stepping up to the plate, I was disappointed, to put it lightly. A good-looking soap star? How predictable. 

Now at least this series will have performances that will be spectacular – perhaps ones I’ll even watch again and again for years to come. 

But he won’t have the easy ride to victory critics are predicting. Even with the crushing news of Dani Dyer, someone I expected to be a runaway favourite, withdrawing due to injury, I still don’t believe Lewis will win. 

I understand the criticism that anyone with previous dance experience shouldn’t compete, but in some ways Lewis isn’t really competition. 

He’s going to deliver, he’s going to get the first straight 10s of the series, and he’ll probably make the final, as I can’t imagine a judge would ever choose to eliminate him and I can’t see anyone on the line-up who could beat him in the dance-off. 

But look at the celebrities with dance experience before him: if anything it’s kept them from winning. 

Instead of complaining that there’s a trained dancer competing against some others who have two left feet, let’s just celebrate the incredible performances that lie ahead because if there is one thing Lewis is going to give us, it’s routines that no one else can.

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