Quickstep to keep Richard Arnold in Strictly for one more week

Richard Arnold will be among the favourites to be the next celebrity to be sent home from Strictly Come Dancing, but the fact he will perform the quickstep next will almost certainly see him remain at least one more week.

The television presenter found himself in the bottom two in the first vote off, but was saved at the expense of Johnny Ball.

This is slightly worrying for Richard as his combined score of 41 from the opening two weeks of dancing was about par for the course and four other celebrities scored worse.

However, he should find himself climbing the leaderboard in week three if the record of professional dance partner Erin Boag is anything to go by.

The last four times Erin has survived long enough to perform the quickstep on Strictly, it has been at worst the equal-highest score of her partner.

Most notably, she dragged Peter Shilton to a score of 26 two years ago and reached 31 with Rory Bremner 12 months ago.

The judges do not seem to be scoring as highly in the early stages this year, but Richard should still find himself moving above the likes of Fern Britton and potentially Victoria Pendleton on the leaderboard for week three.

Erin has already confirmed on her Twitter page that the quickstep is the dance she will be choreographing this week, with the theme being ‘Hollywood’ week.

If Richard is to avoid the bottom two for the second week in succession, it could be an all-female dance-off, with Fern and Jerry Hall prime candidates to rank lowly, although Michael Vaughan is another who is far from safe.

One thing that is for certain is that Richard is not the answer to providing Erin with her first Strictly triumph, despite the fact that she has been on the show since the start and this is her tenth series.

Richard is the rank outsider at 125/1 of all of the remaining celebrities to win the show.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing