Strictly Come Dancing fans shocked after Tess Daly’s strange applause

Strictly Come Dancing presenter Tess Daly has sparked a debate on social media over her unusual clapping.

The 55-year-old star, who co-hosts the BBC’s Latin and ballroom competition alongside The Traitors’ Claudia Winkleman, was introducing JLS singer JB Gill to the dance during the evening’s results show on Sunday, when an eagle-eyed viewer couldn’t help but notice something.

When the audience started applauding, Claudia and Tess joined in, but the latter was actually making a very exaggerated movement and imitating their clapping.

X user @JonnyBWoode was left baffled by the curious display and shared a clip on social media, writing: ‘So… Tess Daly can’t CLAP?!?! #Strictly’

Many other viewers laughed at awkward moments when @SamCaton suggested that Harry Hill would have been amused by the clip, replying: ‘That would have gone triple platinum on the TV burp.’

However, many others have pointed out that there may actually be a surprisingly simple explanation for the applause.

‘You would hear her cheering the crowd while her microphone was right there. The audio would probably sound bad,” wrote @connjam.

And @YCCC33 added: ‘That’s what they do on TV. Remember reading something by Susie Dent (I think) a few years ago that they do ‘fake’ clapping on Countdown as it would mess up the audio and instead they just add the applause electronically (obviously on Strictly you have public for this)’

This seems reasonable enough, although the original poster wasn’t entirely convinced.

He said: ‘It’s not that she’s not applauding, it’s the fact that she doesn’t even do it reliably. And it would have seemed less strange not to have applauded!

Everyone was shocked to see JB at the dance over the weekend as he and Amy Dowden faced off against Paul Merson and Karen Hauer to stay in the competition.

They found themselves in the middle of the leaderboard after the classic Hey Ya! from Jive to Outkast, but were saved after all the judges voted to save JB.

Despite supporting JB, Shirley Ballas noted there were some mistakes, while Anton Du Beke criticized his dancing, insisting the decision wasn’t as “easy” as it should have been.

Strictly Come Dancing returns Saturday at 6:25 a.m. with the results displayed on the Sunday at 7:20 am BBC One and iPlayer.

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