THERE is much stamping of feet and gritting of teeth in the Strictly Come Dancing camp – and they’re not rehearsing the flamenco.

There’s blood on the dancefloor as favourite dancers are axed from partnering celebrities and thrusting young newcomers are introduced as part of a shake-up aimed at putting the wow factor in the show.

The BBC is fed up with Strictly Come Dancing coming off second best to the mighty Saturday night, Simon Cowelldriven juggernaut that is The X Factor.

Strictly loses out consistently to the ITV show in the ratings. So producers are attempting to find ways of making Strictly bigger and better.

But change a successful formula at your peril. Admittedly, all shows, no matter how popular, need a reboot from time to time to refresh the parts that have grown stale and over-familiar. But the BBC seems to be going about it in an insensitive way guaranteed to annoy those who’ve stuck with Strictly over the years.

This week, the BBC announced three new dancers to partner the as yet unnamed celebrities when the show returns in the autumn. All are young and, going by the press photographs, hard up as they can’t afford shirts that button up.

They insist on displaying six pack stomachs rather than nimble footwork.

They’ve obviously been recruited to tempt the younger audience away from The X Factor. All very well, but it means sidelining some of the regular professional dancers who’ve helped make Strictly popular in the first place.

After listing the new dancers and the other professionals who’ll be partnering celebrities, the press release adds almost as an afterthought that “positions in the professional dance group have been offered to…”. For part of the new look sees the introduction of a group “dedicated to performing routines on a scale never before seen on Strictly”.

There follows a list of five of Strictly’s most popular professionals – husband and wife Darren Bennett and Lilia Kopylova, Brian Fortuna, Ian Waite and Matthew Cutler. Strictly speaking, they haven’t been axed from the show, merely moved about a bit.

Already Fortuna has declined the offer and exited the dance floor. The others are said to be considering their positions.

So too is presenter Bruce Forsyth, who has yet to sign his contract for the next series and has said in the past that he’s not in favour of making big changes to the show. If he doesn’t return, the BBC would have the opportunity to replace him with someone younger and hopefully pull in younger viewers.

They’ve already played the age card – though deny it – last year when they unceremoniously sacked the experienced but over-60 Arlene Phillips and replaced her with the inexperienced but younger Alesha Dixon. Protests followed and Dixon never did enough to justify her place on the judging panel.

I imagine Strictly fans won’t let the current moves pass without comment, perhaps even voting with their remote control and switching off. All of which means more bad publicity for the show that has been dogged by bad press in recent years.

Perhaps we should be fair and give the new boys on the dancefloor a chance.

There’s Artem Chigvintsev, a Latin champion who’s a graduate of So You Think You Can Dance? in the US. He brings what are described as “very different dancing genres” in addition to his ballroom champion-level skill.

Jared Murillo, 21, was a US open swing youth champion and was a principal dancer in the movies High School Musical 1 and 2. The third new dancer is Robin Windsor, who’s completed five world Elkie Brooks 50th Anniversary Tour Darlington Civic Theatre SOME performers stand in a league all of their own – and Elkie Brooks is one of them.

Now celebrating half a century in the music business, she wowed a packed Civic Theatre as she belted out hits from her back catalogue, including Fool if You Think It’s Over, Sunshine After the Rain, Don’t Cry Out Loud, Lilac Wine and Pearl’s a Singer.

At 65, Elkie looks and, more importantly, sounds fantastic.

Her versatility is stunning and she moved with ease from blues to rock to jazz and back again, electrifying the audience as she did so.

Indeed, she doesn’t simply deliver a song, she makes love to it, caressing the lyrics and sensuously teasing out raw emotion from every line.

Never an artist to just bask in the glory of her past successes, she also introduced the audience to a couple of songs from her new album. The hauntingly beautiful Why and the title track, Powerless, are not just two exceptionally brilliant ballads, but also proof that Elkie Brooks just keeps getting better and better and testament to the fact that she still has one of the best voices in the business.

Steve Burbridge SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2010 northernecho.co.uk TV & ENTERTAINMENT 21 STAR QUALITY: Elkie Brooks tours of the ballroom dancing show Burn The Floor, in which he has starred and choreographed routines.

BBC controller of entertainment commissioning Mark Linsey – the man who’s going to have to field questions about the changes – says the new dancers and the introduction of a professional dance group will give “even more opportunities to feature different areas of expertise and more genres of dance than in any other series”.

No sign yet of any celebrities, although the talk is that in these budget-restricted times, Strictly doesn’t have enough money to attract the really big names.

If the changes don’t attract more viewers, it could be heading for the last dance.