Entertainment
Hamza Yassin proves Strictly Come Dancing line-ups don’t need A-listers-Shaun Kitchener-Entertainment – Metro
He has become the year’s breakout star – and now the odds-on bookies’ favourite.
Hamza Yassin has become the year’s breakout star (Picture: Guy Levy/BBC/PA)
‘Who?’
After the Strictly Come Dancing 2022 cast was announced, social media was awash with that one question.
Read back over the Twitter reactions from August and you’ll find it peppered amongst such classics as: ‘dear Lord this is getting desperate’, ‘Strictly you need to do better please’, and my personal favourite cry into the virtual abyss: ‘where are the CELEBS??’
It happens a lot on these competition shows, especially Strictly. Viewers are annually disappointed by the perceived lack of star power, as if they truly expected Beyoncé, David Attenborough and Xi Jinping to compete for the Glitterball.
I can’t claim to be above it.
Even I, someone who rolls their eyes at every ‘scraping the barrel!’ comment, wondered if this year’s line-up was a little on the underwhelming side. Pretty safe, pretty unsurprising.
Great as they all are, Helen Skelton, Will Mellor and Kym Marsh felt so inevitable, I was half-convinced we’d been gaslit into forgetting they’d already done it.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, and I’ll give you two words to counter the notion that Strictly needs huge, gasp-inducing household names in order to succeed: Hamza Yassin.
Best known for being a wildlife cameraman(!), he was previously mainly familiar to CBeebies-watching folks with small kids.
And yet! Over the course of the series’ five weeks so far, he has become the year’s breakout star – and now the odds-on bookies’ favourite.
He and pro partner Jowita Przystał came firing out the gate with a leaderboard-topping Foxtrot in week one, but it was his roof-raising Salsa in week four, together with his friendly and humble nature (that story about the nail he keeps painted for his niece? My HEART!), that really made viewers sit up and pay attention.
It was one of those special Strictly dances that felt properly star-making: Jay McGuinness’ Jive, Rose Ayling-Ellis’ Couples’ Choice, Ed Balls’… insert any Ed Balls dance here.
The high-energy routine to Ecuador by Sash looked so complex but so effortless; Hamza completely at ease as he tossed Jowita in the air like a pancake and sparked an applause so loud that Tess Daly claimed she’d ‘never heard a reaction like that’.
Within hours, bookies took him from a 12/1 also-ran to a clear frontrunner for the win.
Of course, we’re still a long way away from the finale, and there’s plenty of time for another contestant to come through with a jaw-dropping routine or two that takes them all the way to the finish line.
The Strictly Come Dancing cast of 2022 (Picture: BBC/Ray Burmiston)
But as things stand, the cast member that’s most excited the public (even more than beautiful, beautiful Vito) is someone many of us simply hadn’t heard of two months ago.
Look back at some of the Twitter replies to the announcement of his casting, less than 12 weeks ago: ‘Stop taking the piss’ moaned one person. ‘Wtf!!!! Isn’t Strictly meant to have celebrity contestants!’ wrote another.
It would be disingenuous to say that Hamza was a total unknown: there were plenty of people who were thrilled to hear he’d be taking part.
But there’s no denying that this is the first time he’s been introduced to a wider audience, and he’s already proven – in a very short space of time – that the success of Strictly is more about casting a balanced bunch of personalities than about netting big names for the sake of it.
It’s hardly ever the most famous people who go all the way anyway. Last year’s Rose Ayling-Ellis, John Whaite and AJ Odudu were, in the eyes of many fans (this one included), the most exciting ‘Top 3’ the show has ever had, but none of them were quite A-listers pre-Strictly.
Castmates Dan Walker, Tom Fletcher and Robert Webb were arguably much more well-known.
This year, the two most influential celebs on Instagram are Kym Marsh and Fleur East – both of whom have already been in the Dance Off (albeit unfairly, in my opinion).
Fame does not necessarily equal popularity once the contest gets going.
Clearly big names are useful in terms of generating hype, and also for scoring big ratings in the opening weeks. And it’s true that viewing figures for 2022 have been slightly down, though they remain huge.
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But in terms of the contestants we get most invested in as the series progresses, it rarely has anything to do with how renowned they were beforehand.
So with Hamza still riding a wave of huge public affection, we should remember this feverish excitement next summer when the cast of 2023 is inevitably met with the same unimpressed shoulder-shrugging.
We won’t, but we should.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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