Sarah Teather tried her best to impress with a host of toe-curlingly awful Strictly Come Dancing jokes at the Liberal Democrat Conference in Birmingham. Opening with a slightly over-familiar confession of her hotel room room habits, she says:
‘I thought I wouldn’t keep you for too long tonight because I want to get back to my hotel room to watch Strictly’.
Pantomime style she rallies her bemused audience, calling out: “Do you watch it [Strictly]? ....Of course you do....”
Desperately the routine continues, as she makes a dig about Labour MP Peter Hain’s much discussed perma-tanned glow:
“I heard though, they’ve got Peter Hain booked for the next series, I heard he wants to do a tango...or is that he has been tangoed.”
She’s not the first to find that politics and Strictly prove a controversial mix. Ann Widdecombe, former Conservative MP, as well as John Sergeant, ITV’s political correspondent, were two of the shows’ contestants that attracted criticism through their appearance. Ann Widdecombe, was dubbed a ‘Dalek in Drag’ for some of her vibrant costumes, and week after week scored the lowest of all contestants. John Sergant, ITV’s Political correspondent actually pulled out of the show, but not before he had been labelled a ‘dancing pig’ by one of the judges.
The embarrassed titter that follows makes the next dig at Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osbourne, even more wincingly weak:
“ I heard that George Osbourne wants to go on the show as well...he wants to do a line dance.”
She added: “That probably damages my efforts at ever getting anything through the quad [Advisors have dubbed meeting between David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander as ‘quad meetings’] ever again.....”
Update: twitter has got in on the act. See below for a slideshow of the best #sarahteatherjokes