Gilda Kirkpatrick during last night's episode of Dancing With the Stars. Photo/Three
Alas, poor Gilda! We hardly got to know her.
Why was it that the public took against Gilda Kirkpatrick, and chose her as the first contestant to be voted off Dancing with the Stars? What cardinal sin propelled them to cast her out? What reason, what whim, WTF?
It wasn't her dancing. She could really dance. She was very exact, quite precise. She moved with a certain glacial elegance. It made for a dramatic spectacle, like watching an iceberg in a moody arctic light.
She was memorable.
One or two other contestants were forgettable and one or two others made you wish you could forget them, but Gilda always had presence, style, a sense of drama.
What, then, counted against her? What seed was planted that got eaten and didn't agree with the public stomach? What did people see that they didn't like, didn't want, didn't wish to see any more of?
The lamp.
It was the lamp that did for Gilda. Last night's programme showed her sitting around what appeared to be a mansion. It didn't have a lot in it. It looked as bare as a museum in between exhibitions. It had a black piano. Well, most of us have black pianos in the lounge. Nothing strange about that.
But there was also, in plain sight, like the Sky Tower or the Eiffel Tower, an enormous, swollen lamp.
Research would almost certainly show that it was the world's biggest lamp. The good viewers of Dancing with the Stars took one look at that lamp and found it gross, upsetting, simply too much. It said: Gilda has more money than you. It said: The rich are different than you and I.
It said: If you dared to turn on the light switch, the sheer size of it would probably cause a nationwide blackout.
The show is a test of New Zealandness. Forget the dancing; the judges blather on about frame and posture, but no one cares what they say; the public are weighing up just how much they like the contestants, whether they can identify with them, trust them.
The lamp went too far. It was a lamp that rubbed its size and expense and questionable taste in people's faces. Damned lamp! Wretched light fixture! Without it, Gilda would surely have survived.
You could see the relief on the faces of the other contestants as they stood around at the show's finale.
Sam Hayes looked like she was about to have a nervous breakdown. Shav looked like she'd already started to have one. David Seymour fluttered his eyelashes, but he's always doing that.
He can certainly count himself lucky. His dance last night was like a mime of someone suffering constipation. Mime is a difficult art but Seymour showed a real gift. He really looked like he needed a laxative.
Suzy Cato wore an elegant, flowing dress, and was divine, again. Robert Rakete wore braces over a very tight shirt, and was dynamic, again. As for the judges, Rachel wore a plunging neckline, and appeared to have spilled a jar of glitter over her breast in an act of divine madness.
But the night belonged to the lamp. It was the smoking gun.
The remaining contestants ought to scurry around their house before the film crews arrive again, and look for incriminating evidence.
David Seymour! To the bathroom cabinet, pronto.
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