It’s not long until the new series of Strictly Come Dancing begins on BBC1, and we can sense the preparations that are taking place behind the scenes. The dancers are limbering up, the judges are practising being pithy and Bruce Forsyth is desperately searching for his reading glasses, unaware that they’re balanced on top of his head like in that episode of The Wombles.

And the imminent arrival of Strictly Come Dancing means that there isn’t much time left for you to get a Strictly Come Dancing bet in before the series starts. Once all the contestants have done their first dance, everyone will know who’s good at dancing and who’s a rod-backed arsehole, and so the Strictly Come Dancing betting odds will shorten drastically. A bet placed now will be riskier, but the payoff will be bigger – as anyone who put a pre-series bet on Darren Gough last year will happily tell you once they’ve taken their diamond-studded jetpack off.

Here are today’s Strictly Come Dancing betting odds, for DJ Spoony, Ray Fearon and Claire King, with help from PaddyPower.com…

DJ Spoony – DJ Spoony? Who he? We didn’t learn much from our grandparents, but we learnt this – always be suspicious of disc jockeys, especially if they’re named after cutlery. DJ Spoony, you’ll remember, was part of The Dreem Team – Radio 1’s foray into UK Garage; a ploy which backfired when Radio 1 realised that playing 21 Seconds by So Solid Crew and a Craig David song over and over again wasn’t really the best way to spend three hours of a Sunday morning. Dreem Team ditched, DJ Spoony manfully continued to be a Radio 1 DJ all by himself until just a couple of weeks ago. It’s a big leap from playing Body Groove by Architechs Featuring Nana 32 times in a row to ballroom dancing, but that’s what DJ Spoony is attempting to do on Strictly Come Dancing. Terrifyingly, these betting odds say he’s going to do quite well. Current Strictly Come Dancing betting odds – 8/1

Ray Fearon – Ray Fearon? Who he? A soap star, that’s who. Anyone who’s seen Coronation Street will have seen Ray Fearon, although telling you exactly who he is might take a while. Ray Fearon played a mechanic. No, not the mechanic with the occasional moustache. No, not the thick-looking fat one. The other one – the one who was sort of going out with Bradley Walsh’s wife for a while. Got it? Good. However, when he’s not grouching about down the Rovers, Ray Fearon is treading the boards as a classically-trained Shakespearean actor – something that implies he knows how to control his body a bit better than, say, DJ Spoony. Even more importantly than that, though, Ray Fearon also has an army of soggy-knickered middle-aged female fans from his Coronation Street days who will ensure that – even if he loses all sense of occasion and throws his dance partner through a lighting rig before reciting large passages from Mein Kampf – he’ll go through to the later stages of Strictly Come Dancing at least. Current Strictly Come Dancing betting odds – 7/1

Claire King – Claire King? Who she? Need a semi-glamorous ballbreaker for your soap opera or long-running popular drama series? Claire King’s your girl. She played a feisty ball-breaking bitch in Emmerdale and a feisty ball-breaking bitch in Bad Girls. And nothing else ever, probably. Whether or not Claire King can dance or not is another matter entirely, although these betting odds say that she can. Other than that crushing dull piece of information, the only other thing we know about Claire King is that she’s had it off with both Bob Geldof and Frankie Dettori. If you’re a girl, that means you can relax safe in the knowledge that there’s at least one woman on the planet that’s got worse taste in men than you, and if you’re a boy then you know that there’s at least one woman on the planet who’ll find your tiny unwashed body vaguely sexy. It’s a win/win situation, people! Current Strictly Come Dancing betting odds – 13/2

Tomorrow – the Strictly Come Dancing betting odds for the two favourites; Louisa Lytton and Emma Bunton.

[story by Stuart Heritage]