Felicity Kendal attends the 'Strictly Come Dancing' Season 8 Launch Show

Felicity Kendal attends the 'Strictly Come Dancing' Season 8 Launch Show at BBC Television Centre on September 8, 2010 in London, England.

Pensioner power as Flexible Felicity and Ann delight 'Strictly' viewers

Unfortunately, there wasn't any trick in the book that could have saved Paul Daniels from getting the chop on Strictly Come Dancing. 

The magician exited the show after his rumba failed to impress the judges, earning him just 16 points out of a possible 40. 


Otherwise, last week was very much a case of – what commentators have dubbed – pensioner power. 

Comedian-turned-psychologist Pamela Stephenson, 60, smouldered her way through a rumba to top the leader board.

She had amazingly dexterous competition from Felicity Kendal.

The 64-year-old actress quite literally bent over backwards to show off the benefits of her pilates regime.

She sent pulses racing by performing the splits, giving viewers an eyeful of her thighs in a sexy slip of a dress that was slashed to the thigh.

Strictly between us, it would be SO easy to have an affair!

Felicity Kendal is hunkering down over a low table, gaily ripping into a chicken sandwich to replace calories lost during the morning’s rehearsals for Strictly Come Dancing, and fuelling up for the afternoon session.



When she looks up to greet me, I see she is sporting a bruise below her right eye. Is this the aftermath of what Strictly judge Bruno Tonioli called the ‘smackeroonee’ — the lingering kiss she gave her dance partner Vincent Simone at the end of their steamy tango in week four?

Did Simone’s girlfriend, Susan Duddy, take her bloody revenge? Did Felicity’s ex-husband and now long-term partner Michael Rudman have a fit of jealousy?



When she started on Strictly, she joked that Texan director Rudman had fled back to the U.S. Following Drewe Henley in 1968, Rudman is her second husband. They were married in 1983, divorced in 1991 and reunited in 1998 after Kendal’s relationship with the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard broke down.