A month ago, I was feeling quite grumpy about Strictly Come Dancing. There was all the bad news, and the new contestants weren’t hugely grabbing me, and whatever, maybe I could just give it a miss this year.

Guess how long it was into the launch show before I was giddy and clapping and bouncing around the room? About ten minutes, if I’m being modest, five minutes if I’m being truthful. How can you hate on the Vengabus and the 90s tunes that followed?

The cast this year seem like such a fun bunch - even though I was a bit moody about not knowing many of them, I’m already half in love with a few of them. Wynne is hilarious, that Pete (who I keep accidentally calling Joe) Wicks was dry and funny, and you can’t argue with a bit of Sarah Hadland. The pairings are great, although I got almost all my guesses wrong. So lovely to have Amy back and even Neil’s getting a partner this year!

I won’t evaluate the duos this time as they’ll be plenty of that forthcoming over the weeks that follow but just to point out the winner and loser of the evening.

Winner: Montell Douglas, who said “There isn’t a person on earth who doesn’t want to be partnered with Jojo.” So true. And then knocked it out the park with their couple name Mojo. MOJO. Utter genius.

Loser: Paul Merson, who already looks like he’s not going to be as good as Tony Adams and that’s saying something… Karen confirmed they will be dancing to Vindaloo. I mean, how can you even dance to that, it is clearly just a marching song. He’s very lucky no one goes home in the first week.

Which is next week! Hooray for Strictly!