Strictly Come Dancing’s Aston Merrygold tops the leaderboard dressed as a troll for movie week

Merrygold and his partner were painted blue and pink for the occasion
Top of the leaderboard: Aston Merrygold and his partner Janette Manrara's performance
BBC/Guy Levy

Aston Merrygold has topped the Strictly Come Dancing leaderboard with his Troll-themed Cha Cha Cha to Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop The Feeling.

He and partner Janette Manrara’s performance was inspired by the film Trolls, with the judges commending the pair on their ‘cartoonishness’.

They received three nines and an eight, giving them an overall score of 35, putting them ahead of X Factor winner Alexandra Burke and partner Gorka Marquez who received 33, and Holby City’s Joe McFadden and Katya Jones, who scored 32.

At the middle of the table were Paralympic athlete Jonnie Peacock and partner Oti Mabuse with 26, and EastEnders actor Davood Ghadami and Nadiya Bychkova, with 25.

Meanwhile at the lower end of the leaderboard were the Reverend Richard Coles and Dianne Buswell, scoring 14 and presenter Ruth Langsford and Anton Du Beke, with 15.

It was movie week on Strictly and the celebrities (and the costume department) made the most of the occasion, with the contestants dressed up as scarecrows, panthers and pilots.

Strictly Come Dancing 2017 - In pictures

1/14

At one point in the show, head judge Shirley Ballas and Brendan Cole had an awkward disagreement over whether the professional dancer had included rise and fall in his Tango with partner Charlotte Hawkins.

Judge Bruno Tonioli joined in telling Coles he ‘should be more respectful’ to Ballas.

Strictly Come Dancing continues on Sunday, October 8 at 6.35pm on BBC One.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in