My good friend, Mr Runciman Shave Esquire, is an inveterate imbiber of copious amounts of alcohol; an unashamed ladies man; and a letter writer of renown. Every now and then Runciman lets his demons get the better of him and puts pen to paper, letting rip on topical subjects with such anger and unbridled bad language that he has to retire to the country – well, his mother’s house near Leith Links – to recuperate. Under normal circumstances I would treat any correspondence that I receive from him with the utmost confidence, but his latest offering (although heartfelt and no doubt well intentioned) made me wet myself. The letter does not dwell on politics; rather it concerns itself with the phenomenon that is Strictly Come Dancing. It is reproduced here for your enjoyment.

Dear boy,
I trust that you are well and still revelling in the company of that loquacious brigade of beauties in the Carrier’s Quarters. Please do pass on my fondest regards to them all in any way that you see fit. I hesitate to inform you of my reason for lifting the mighty pen, as I fear that it may deter you from reading the rest of this letter but I need to expunge the poison that has festered in my breast since last weekend.

Protempore is the author of 19 articles including 'Politics, What Politics?' from December's Leither

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As you know, it is a rare occurrence indeed for me to be stuck in Chez Shave on a Saturday night, but last week, due to a bout of what I believe is commonly known as the trots, I was forced to spend an entire evening in front of Logie Baird’s devil box. After being made to suffer some be-permed nancy boy reading out football results and giggling like a tipsy schoolgirl, I settled down to watch what I thought would be a pleasant trip down memory lane, a show entitled Strictly Come Dancing. To my utter astonishment and disbelief, instead of a heady revisiting of the original ballroom extravaganza, dreamt up by our old friend and Miss World botherer, Eric Morley, I was subjected to a tortuous evening in the company of that wizened half-wit, Bruce Bloody Forsyth and a troupe of dancers who wouldn’t know a decent Paso Doble if it wiggled up to them and kicked their arses!

Needless to say, half way through this pile of bilious tripe, I was forced to open a rather cheeky little Rioja, which did absolutely nothing to relieve the lava-like rumblings in my trouser department but went some way towards anaesthetising the pain that Forsyth was inflicting. Who in God’s name told the man that he was in the least amusing? All he does is ramble inanely about sharing tap dancing shoes with Sammy Davis Junior and wiggle his gargantuan chin whilst uttering insensible rubbish like, “Nice to see you to see you nice.” Or, in homage to a previous piece of totty that he was shacked up with, “bv, bv, bv, bv, bv, bv, give us a twirl!” The man’s an absolute embarrassment, not only to himself but to his poor wife, who I believe is of Central American extraction and thus would have expected so much more when she took up with this cretin.

Forsyth presides over what is loosely regarded as a dancing competition, whereby so called professional dancers become awkwardly entwined with broken down cricketers and actresses of a ‘certain age’ in an attempt to perform a series of ballroom dances in order to impress a panel of, ahem, judges. The judges are a rum bunch and no mistake. They are made up of what I suppose some spotty-faced producer deemed to be the bespoke unit; there is an ex-winner of the competition who appears to know nothing about ballroom dancing (she’s in good company); a deranged Italian who is, I suspect, a bit light on the loafers and waves his arms around like a demented in-patient at an institution for the criminally untalented; a resident baddie who seems to delight in sneering a lot and incurring the genteel wrath of the audience and who is, I’m sure, a very good friend of the deranged Italian; and an old, bewildered Cockney, who seems to earn his keep by wearing a dust-covered velvet suit and screaming ‘SEVEN’ incessantly.

It is no exaggeration to say that this is quite possibly the most blatant fleecing of licence payer’s pockets since the BBC took the moronic decision to broadcast a show in which the participants wrap their cholesterol packed bodies in a silver condom and attempt to squeeze through a hole in a wall. Trots or not, the Rioja will be taking a swift hammering this weekend – something which should also be meted out to Forsyth and his gang of jitterbugging non-entities.

Yours in despair and, as ever, awash in drink, Runciman.