Swansea’s Melanie Walters, Gwen in Gavin and Stacey, is out of Strictly Come Dancing after losing Sunday night’s dance-off.
The actress, 64, and her professional partner Aljaž Škorjanec are the second couple to leave this year’s Strictly. Hairstylist Chris Appleton and Amy Dowden went out the week before.
Walters told host Emma Willis she had expected to be going home a week earlier. That meant one more week of rehearsals with Škorjanec than she had counted on.
How the Strictly dance-off went: Craig, Shirley and Anton saved Shaun Wright-Phillips
On Saturday the couple danced a Charleston to Gina G’s Ooh Ahh… Just A Little Bit and scored 17. That was two more than former footballer Shaun Wright-Phillips and Alexis Warr got for their quickstep to The Monkees’ I’m A Believer.
Even so, both couples landed in the bottom two and had to dance their routines again on Sunday night’s results show.
Craig Revel Horwood chose to save Wright-Phillips and Warr, and Motsi Mabuse backed Walters.
Head judge Shirley Ballas sided with Revel Horwood. Anton Du Beke had the deciding vote and also saved the former footballer.
The night before, Revel Horwood had told the pair he “didn’t love” their Charleston, while Mabuse urged Walters to “keep going”.
Plenty of viewers disagreed with the result. Some said on social media that Walters had been the stronger dancer in the dance-off, and others called her exit a shock.
“Diolch yn fawr iawn”: Melanie Walters’ goodbye to Strictly and Aljaž Škorjanec
Walters said goodbye to the rest of the cast in Welsh, thanking them with “diolch yn fawr iawn”.
Škorjanec called her the “ultimate professional”, telling her: “You showed me what hard work really is.”
Afterwards she wrote on Instagram: “So sorry to be leaving the show. Huge thanks for all your support.”
She sent “all the luck and love” to the couples still in the competition. She saved her biggest thanks for Škorjanec, “the beautiful soul and amazing teacher”.
Joanna Page, her on-screen daughter Stacey, replied that she was “so so proud” and that Walters had been “beautiful, honest, heartfelt”.
From Edelweiss to the Charleston: Gwen’s three weeks in the Strictly ballroom
Walters scored 15 for her cha cha cha in week one. She scored 15 again in Movie Week for a waltz to Edelweiss from The Sound of Music.
She was the last name announced in this year’s line-up in August, when her Gower MP, Tonia Antoniazzi, promised “we will all be watching”.
Within hours, co-star Ruth Jones had sent her a message in character as Nessa. It came with a warning about one judge: “Don’t take no crap from Craig Revel Horwood.”
Walters has played Gwen West since Gavin and Stacey began in 2007. She is also in the cast of Santa Maria, the S4C and ITV drama filmed in Swansea and Mumbles.
She and Škorjanec are due on It Takes Two tonight. The remaining 13 couples dance in Icons Week on Saturday, from 6.15pm on BBC One.
Discover more from Swansea Bay News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
