For weeks now, the British public have been keeping John Sergeant in Strictly Come Dancing for one reason and one reason alone.

And that’s because he’s old, fat, sweats a lot and when he dances he looks like a man who’s been dipped him in chip fat, plonked on an ice rink and had bullets fired at his shins. But regardless of that, John Sergeant had secured the public Strictly Come Dancing vote, much to the dismay of the judges and his fellow dancers.

But now John Sergeant has decided to fall on his sword. Not literally – although if you did give John Sergeant a sword and tell him to perform a dance with it he’d probably fall on it by accident and end up squirting pints of his guts into Tess Daly‘s eye. What we mean is that John Sergeant has chosen to resign from Strictly Come Dancing.

We’re not completely sure why, but reality shows have gone a bit berserk this year. First there was Big Brother, which was won by a girl so overwhelmingly devoid of charisma that her own mother now tends to greet her by saying “Oh, I know you. You’re, oh…” and clicking her fingers for 15 full minutes until she incorrectly guesses that maybe she was on Hollyoaks once. And now there’s X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing.

X Factor‘s elimination of Laura White last week prompted thousands of complaints from idiots who will have completely forgotten that Laura ever existed by the time she finally gets round to releasing her first badly-selling record sometime next year. And on Strictly Come Dancing there’s dear old John Sergeant.

Part news reporter and part shop-damaged Moomin doll, John Sergeant never quite got the hang of Strictly Come Dancing – his routines were jumbled and his performances were bewilderingly bad – and yet the British public kept voting John through regardless. There are main three theories as to why this happened:

1 - John Sergeant’s inherent charm couldn’t help but win the viewers over.

2 - The viewers wanted to deliberately upset the Strictly Come Dancing judges.

3 - John Sergeant’s Strictly Come Dancing partner has got quite big tits.

In retrospect, it was probably the third one. Initially John Sergeant encouraged the public’s decision to keep him in Strictly Come Dancing above more proficient dancers, but as the weeks wore on John faced a growing backlash – first from the judges and then from his fellow contestants, who all knew that a Strictly Come Dancing victory was all that was standing between them and a career comeback in the form of an ITV2 reality series about funny milkmen or something.

And today it all got too much for John Sergeant to take, so he resigned from Strictly Come Dancing with this statement:

“I am sorry to say I have decided to leave Strictly Come Dancing. It was always my intention to have fun on the show and I was hoping to stay in as long as possible. The trouble is that there is now a real danger that I might win the competition. Even for me that would be a joke too far. I would like to thank Kristina and all those viewers who have been rooting for me through the series.”

John will return to Strictly Come Dancing this Saturday for a special farewell dance, but then he’ll be gone forever, at which point Strictly Come Dancing will become a shameless showcase for Lisa Snowdon‘s Blue Steel facial expression and little more.

Nobody know what’ll happen to Strictly Come Dancing now that John Sergeant’s gone – some viewers will feel alienated because the dancer they chose to support was pressured to resign and stop watching, while others will be dismayed at the serious turn that an otherwise frilly Saturday teatime show was decided to adopt. Maybe it’s even ruined Strictly Come Dancing‘s credibility for good. Who knows?

But the important thing is that we cherish all the fond memories that John Sergeant gave to us during Strictly Come Dancing, like that time he dawdled backwards and forwards on the dancefloor, or the other time he dawdled backwards and forwards on the dancefloor. Or the time separate from the other two times where he dawdled backwards and forwards on the dancefloor. Or… no, actually that’s it.

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We’ve always said that the problem with radio is that not enough fat people get violently angry and try to attack people on air.

So god bless Howard Stern‘s tubby and slightly psychotic-seeming sidekick Artie Lange for having an honestly disturbing argument with his assistant, before apparently trying to attack him and then resigning, all live on air. It’s what we’ve wanted to happen to Chris Moyles for years. Hats off to you, Artie Lange, you crazy, crazy bastard.

And, yes, we’ve got the whole of Artie Lange’s berserkoid meltdown after the jump.

This is the difference between Britain and America – in America, radio shows are in part hosted by aggressive chainsmoking overweight ex-convicts with debilitating cocaine and heroin addictions, while in Britain they’re hosted by Jo Whiley. America sounds better, to be honest.

And as far as aggressive chainsmoking overweight ex-convicts with debilitating cocaine and heroin addictions go, none were better than Howard Stern’s sidekick Artie Lange, for he was fatter and more aggressive than everyone else put together. We say was – technically he is still fat and aggressive, but he just isn’t Howard Stern’s sidekick any more.

That’s because, at some point during yesterday’s show, Artie Lange got into a fight with his assistant that spilled out into the studio, ended up with Artie Lange apparently trying to attack the assistant and then caused Lange’s immediate on-air resignation. Which, it’s fair to say, sounds slightly more exciting than The Archers. The Chicago Sun Times reports:

Comedian Artie Lange quit his 7-year-run as Howard Stern’s sidekick during a violent outburst on Thursday’s Sirius Satellite Radio broadcast… The incident appears to have left the “shock jock” Stern stunned. Replays of the show scheduled throughout Thursday were replaced with programming from earlier in the week. “I’m flabbergasted … Artie is clearly out of control with this,” Stern said on the air after Lange charged after his assistant in what the comic claimed was a dispute over money. “That was crazy what I just saw. I don’t understand it. I don’t approve of it and I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”

But that’s enough reading for you. You want to hear Artie Lange going going apeshit and resigning on air, don’t you. Well, OK, here it is – Artie Lange’s meltdown in all its glory.

Personally, we can’t see what the problem is – if a grown man can’t call his employee a motherfucker and try to attack him in front of millions of listeners then can he really call himself a man?

However, this weird on-air incident has left Howard Stern with the problem of finding a suitable replacement for Artie Lange. He’ll need to find someone who’ll effortlessly slip into Artie Lange’s old role and have the same kind of persona and attitudes. And that’ll be hard, because foul-mouthed crack-addicted grizzly attack-bears have been quite hard to come by since the fall of the Soviet Union.

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Howard Stern’s sidekick quits show - CST