Strictly Come Dancing’s Shirley Ballas hits back at criticism over Catherine and Johannes’ exit

Shirley Ballas has defended her decision to vote for Emmerdale’s Catherine Tyldesley and pro Johannes Radebe to leave the competition.

The head judge for Strictly, 59, faced calls to be sacked from viewers after the duo were booted out from the show on Sunday night.

But Ballas, who began dancing when she was seven, questioned why viewers did not vote for Tyldesley, forcing her to be in the dance off.

Speaking at the Pride of Britain Awards, she told reporters: “I have one question for everybody – why was she in the bottom two? Why? Who put her there? Because it wasn’t us. She wasn’t the lowest scoring from the judges, so why was she there?

“You cannot complain if someone is going in the bottom two. I have to choose somebody at the end of the day with my technical, fifty years of experience to go through.

“I do not expect people sitting at home to understand even why I put them through. They’re not there, they don’t know the technique. They might be looking at what last week was or what next week could be, I have to judge it there and then.

“I made exactly the right decision.”

She added: “I can take a two second look at somebody and make my mind up, just off sheer technical quality, or expertise, or difficulty of what they choose to do. Unfortunately Catherine got the cha-cha. She made mistakes, if people slow it down they will see that. 

“It is the most difficult thing of this whole job for me. I do not want to send anybody home.”

Ballas refused to say who she believed the winner of the competition might be as she is head judge.

She said: “As you can see, people thought she [Tyldesley] was going to win, everyone has their opinions. I’m not tipping anybody, it’s changing week by week. It changes according to what the people vote for.”

The Daily Mirror Pride of Britain Awards, in partnership with TSB, will be broadcast on ITV on November 5th at 8pm.