Strictly Come Dancing has finally completed its celebrity line-up for 2026, promising glitz, glamour... and a dog trainer called Graeme. Huh? Or rather, who? That was the question posed in floods of comments when Graeme Hall, the star of Channel 5’s Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly, was unveiled as joining the class of 2026 last week, while the same happened yesterday when sports content creator John Nellis was announced as the penultimate name.
I’ve not encountered Hall before, and maybe that’s on me; he does have 165,000 followers on Instagram where he, unsurprisingly, mostly posts pictures of dogs. But I’m clearly not alone in my bewilderment. Since the full line-up was released earlier today, fans on social media declared this year’s group of celebrities the “weakest” in the show’s 22-year history, while also cracking jokes about the whittling away of the BBC budget. Given the BBC is currently aiming to make £500m in budget cuts, and is reportedly putting Strictly out to competitive tender next year, à la Doctor Who, they might be onto something.
