Jody Cundy CBE third to depart Strictly 2023

This weekend, Jody Cundy CBE became the third contestant to be eliminated from Strictly Come Dancing.

A combination of viewers’ votes and judges’ scores placed Jody and his professional partner Jowita Przystal in the bottom two along with Eddie Kadi and his partner Karen Hauer.

Both couples performed their routines again – Jody and Jowita their Salsa to Samba de Janeiro by Bellini; Eddie and Karen their American Smooth to Sex Bomb by Tom Jones.

It was then up to the judges who they were going to send home.

Craig Revel Horwood chose to save Eddie and Karen for “improvement and musicality”, while Motsi Mabuse saved them for being “much, much stronger” in the dance off. Anton Du Beke also chose to save Eddie and Karen, noting that it had been “a bit of an off night” for Jody.

Although her vote had no bearing on the result, head judge Shirley Ballas said she agreed with her fellow judges.

When asked by Tess about his time on the show, Jody said:

“You know what, when I signed up for this I thought what an earth am I signing up for and we did that first live show and I absolutely loved every second of it. And just being able to dance and do something I’ve never done before and get completely out of my comfort zone and with this amazing person. This person’s got so much energy, every morning like 9 O’clock we’ve got, start of training and she’s like BAMMM, like this, she comes into the room like an absolute cannonball and she just doesn’t stop the whole day. And she doesn’t lose any faith, doesn’t lose anything, motivates me on to do more and more. So I’ve had an absolute blast.”

Jowita added: “I cannot even describe how proud I am of you Jody, cause from Day 1 till now, it’s enormous improvement. And I hope from now on, when you go out, when you hear the music, you’re not going to hide anywhere. You’re going to go on that dancefloor and you’re going to give it all. And I hope, one day when you look back at all of this, you will say to yourself I’m proud of myself, because that will be my biggest achievement.”

Tonight’s results show opened with a beautiful love story from the Strictly pros, and Beverley Knight performed in the ballroom singing ‘I’m on Fire’.

The remaining twelve couples will take to the dancefloor again next Saturday at 6.35pm on BBC One.