The ‘Hints’ blog post was becoming a little too long, so I split them into two parts – just like the Strictly Come Dancing Final itself!

I’ve come up with 8 types – feel free to message me on Twitter or comment if you have suggestions of your own 🙂

The Rabid One Celeb Worshipper : Their favourite can do no wrong, they are blind to any mistake they make and they will slaughter the couple who they see as responsible for ending their fave’s journey. Example:

This was in reply to a ‘Thank You’ tweet from Anton, along with 1 other negative, 27 positive, 461 RTs and 3,179 likes. 

Seriously, get a life. It isn’t a fix because your favourite got voted out (see note re Dance Off rules on the Hints post).

The Dedicated to a Fun Filled Saturday Night of Light Entertainment: They’ve got copious bottles of wine to hand, choccies, sparkly hand made paddles and they’re active across social media Because They Cannot Get Enough Of Strictly. And they accept it’s just a TV show, even when their fave gets the boot.

The Technical Wiz: An informed and learned fan who can point out what it is that the judges are seeing that we’re not, to help us make sense of the scoring and comments. Has been severely tested this season.

The Ones Who Believe the Judges Are Gods and Their Choices Must Be Respected and So We Should Ditch The Public Vote: Yeah, right. Jog on. (Generally tabloid “journalists” trying to wind us up). It’s all about engagement. If we don’t get to vote, we won’t invest in the show. And if we don’t invest in it, it won’t last long.

The Ones Who Think It Should Be Only Good Dancers Taking Part: They’ve completely forgotten about Come Dancing, Strictly’s ancestor which got canned eventually because no-one was watching. It’s all about The Journey – which is why we need consistent scoring and comments.

The Floater: My mum, plus a few million others. She votes for someone different every week (in fact, the only one who ever consistently got her vote was Tom Chambers in Series 6). Jay’s Charleston was her choice in the Semi. She’s voted for most of the top 8 at various times.

The “I only vote in the Semi Final and/or Final” voters: The ones who can screw up all the bookies predictions. Gotta love them. They’ll vote for technically gifted dancers who do a crowd pleasing routine, which is why someone seemingly unpopular all the way through generally isn’t voted out first in the final. (Looking at Natalie, Simon and Denise following that comment).

The Sympathy Voter: There are two types. A) those who feel a couple has been judged unfairly and throw a vote to those at the bottom of the leaderboard and B) those who want to wind up everyone else. They both stop doing it around the quarter final stage because they know their actual favourite will be at risk. Which is why no really bad dancer (Series 1 was a total one off) has ever gone beyond that point.

The Ones Who Believe Only Their Choice Is Correct (with thanks to @TashaLouise6) So dedicated they have to reply to every single tweet against their pro …

The inspiration for this post was entirely the fault of the Rabids and ‘journalists’ … more hints to understanding the Goliath that is Strictly can be found here.

Enjoy the final!