BBC Strictly Come Dancing's Craig Revel Horwood picks his 2024 'favourite'

Strictly Come Dancing's notoriously candid judge Craig Revel Horwood has named is 2024 "favourite". Typically, the juge didn't hold back in delivering his take on the contestants during Friday's It Takes Two.

Craig engaged in spirited dialogue with host Fleur East, discussing Pete Wicks and his dance partner Jowita Przystal, who languished at the bottom of the leaderboard last weekend.

"Oh I love Pete! He's low scoring but he's adorable! " exclaimed Craig. Fleur quizzed Craig on Pete's potential to succeed, to which he responded tersely, "No! ", but hastened to add, "Well, that I have to say, is up to him. I think he's really really good and another person who is committed."

Craig conveyed optimism about Pete's improvement: "I would love him to be a better dancer and in time, if he stays in, I think in another couple of weeks if he can get to Blackpool, for instance, I think that might give him more confidence and a very good reason to fly through the competition. He's great but he's up against a lot of good people."

Read more: Craig Revel-Horwood on low scores

As for Tasha Ghouri and her professional partner Aljaz Skorjanec, who achieved a near-perfect score with their moving couple's choice number to P!nk's What About Us, Craig stood out by not dishing out a ten but a nine instead.

With time pressing, Fleur demanded, "Quickly, we need to know Craig because we've run out of time, we need to know Tasha and Aljaz, what does she need to do to get a perfect score from you? ".

Craig Revel Horwood didn't hold back during his critique, stating: "Be better, she just needs to be better! " which left host Fleur taken aback as she exclaimed: "Be better? Oh wow! " He elaborated on his point, saying: "No she's fantastic it's just each time I'm looking for, I mean I'm not looking for 'perfection' perfection, I'm looking for something where I put my pen down and I stop judging and I'm involved in that entire dance from beginning, middle and end. I mean it is tough" to which Fleur jokingly replied: "Alright, Craig, you just want too much! ".

In a separate segment, Craig defended his decision to score Chris McCausland low. Over the weekend, 47 year old Chris and his partner Dianne Buswell, aged 35, performed a Tango to KISS' "Rock and Roll All Nite," but only managed to secure 29 points, landing them towards the bottom of the leaderboard.

When Fleur questioned: "On average, you score Chris six points, now for someone who is the favourite for the final. Why the low scores Craig? " Craig appeared surprised and queried: "Do I? " He then added: "He still needs to work on a lot of things! I think people at home are falling in love with him, which is absolutely fine, but technically his frame is not great."

"He has improved, don't get me wrong, but there's still work to do on his frame, his shoulders keep raising, and his posture needs improvement. There's still a lot of work to do."