Denise waltzes to pole position in Strictly

Denise Van Outen has waltzed back to the top of the Strictly Come Dancing leaderboard.

The TV presenter and actress reclaimed the top spot with a romantic Viennese waltz to the famous Etta James song At Last after losing her number one spot to gymnast Louis Smith last week.

Van Outen and her dance partner James Jordan achieved a score of 35, narrowly edging out Girls Aloud singer Kimberley Walsh and Tracy Beaker star Dani Hamer, who both scored 33.

But Olympic gymnastics hero Smith remained the bookies’ favourite despite finishing out of the podium positions on this week’s leaderboard.

His samba to Ricky Martin’s La Bomba with partner Flavia Cacace, prompted judge Bruno Tonioli to brand him “the king of hypnotic pelvic gyration”.

He said: “There’s a girl round here, she’s cross-eyed and dribbly, she’s lost all control of herself.

“This Latin dance is such a perfect dance, it’s like a Savile Row suit for you.”

But Darcey Bussell was not so impressed.

The judge said: “I was a bit disappointed. It was a bit safe. It was too calculated, the moves were too calculated for me.

“I wanted it to be freer, much freer.”

Meanwhile, Daybreak presenter Richard Arnold’s foxtrot failed to impress the judges on the BBC1 dance show as he plummeted to the bottom of the leaderboard, with a disappointing 17.

Commenting on his dance with partner Erin Boag to the Shirley Bassey classic Hey Big Spender, judge Len Goodman described Arnold as “the plodfather”.

He said: “It was a tad ploddy, I’m going to call you the plodfather. It was all going for me quite nicely. This is the most difficult of the ballroom dances for the men.

“It was going well and what happens is the pros go wrong, and within a bar, they’re back, but with the celebrities you make a little incident and it takes a while.”

Judge Craig Revel Horwood described it as “a complete disaster”.

Olympic golden girl Victoria Pendleton once again disappointed with a samba to Tom Jones’s It’s Not Unusual, finishing second-bottom with a score of 23.

Wearing a sparkly white dress, the cycling gold medallist’s dance with partner Brendan Cole was described as “galumpish and awkward” by Revel Horwood.

The results show will be screened on BBC1 at 7.20pm tonight.