THE end, when it came, was not mercifully short. In fact, it was mercilessly long. At home it seemed to be an eternity of waiting, so heaven only knows what it must have felt like for the man who stood at the eye of the agony, his future trembling in the balance.

One began to wonder about the humanity of it. Obviously, the infliction of turmoil is part of the deal with television endurance shows. Even so, basic fellow feeling dictates that there are limits. And those limits have been wildly overstepped, surely, when, between the closing of the phone lines and the announcement of the public’s judgment, a person has to endure a guest appearance by Westlife, singing Smile.

Roger Black is a big man, though. The former 400 metres specialist has proved that again and again over the past six rounds of Strictly Come Dancing. He proved it in the cha-cha-cha, he proved it in the waltz. Whatever the pro- celebrity ballroom format has thrown in his path, he has met with a level stare, including slacks with a nylon content that would have killed a lesser person. He has not crumbled. Nor, more to the point, has he caught fire. For, as we now realise, when people talk about a highly combustible situation, it’s ballroom dancing they mean.

Featuring more man-made fibre per square metre than any show on television, every week Strictly Come Dancing is a warehouse fire waiting to happen. How Black got through Saturday night’s rumba without igniting the hairs on his legs will become one of television’s enduring mysteries.

But it’s over now and he’s out, evicted by judges and public in tandem after a waltz in which the glory of his foxtrot in round four, where the judges commended him, like Rome, for “a great rise and fall”, was a distant memory.

“The standing spin looked like you were kick-starting a motorbike,” the generally avuncular Len Goodman, the only one of the four judges who doesn’t quietly fancy himself as the show’s Simon Cowell, said. “You looked like you were digging or something,” one of the others said. “Bring it on,” Black said, bullishly. “Laboured and clumsy, and you lost your balance, ” Arlene Phillips, who likes to bring it on and then some, said.

In the aftermath of this drubbing, Black was philosophical. “When you get to this level, you expect that,” he said. But, sorely needing points, he knew that the show was now presenting him with the biggest ask of his dancing life: could he nail a rumba in the pressure-cooker environment of live Saturday evening television? Let’s be frank, it was a dance too far. Black, who by his own admission had had a busy week, seemed stiff and angular — more rhomboid than rumboid. At the point midway through the routine when he reached for the neckline of Camilla, his partner, I thought his appearance on the series was about to end in controversy. A false move at that moment and he could have brought disgrace upon the whole of British athletics.

But no, with a flick of the fingers, Black unhooked some sort of secret compartment near Camilla’s armpit and, in a cascade of chiffon, her tiny black number was suddenly overlaid with a longer, filmy red number. It was like that famous moment from Eurovision history when the male members of Bucks Fizz enlivened a quiet moment in Making Your Mind Up by ripping off the female members’ skirts.

Except, in a massively significant development, it was the reverse of that because this was an on-stage costume adjustment in which the subject ended up wearing more clothes. After Janet Jackson’s mammary exposure at the Super Bowl and the ensuing controversy, it was hard not to read this innovative stagework as a forceful piece of moral point-making by Roger and Camilla, and we give them due credit them for it.

Unlike the judges, who gave them no credit for anything. The beating that Black was handed for his waltz was but a light bruising by comparison with the kicking the judges dished out for his rumba. “Shoulders all hunched . . . hands are terrible . . . like dancing with a plank of wood . . .” If those judges aren’t careful, the world of ballroom will be getting a reputation for cattiness.

There was once a television sports panel on which Linford Christie blithely announced that second is nowhere. Sitting alongside him, Black, who had recently taken Olympic silver, begged to differ. If second really is nowhere, I wonder what Linford — almost certainly watching at home — made of fifth. Worryingly, the history of pro-celebrity ballroom dancing is littered with the fallen and the forgotten. Where is Esther Rantzen now? What ever became of Carol Vorderman? Diarmuid Gavin, anyone? To name only those previously evicted from this series.

But let’s at least remember Camilla’s touching defiance on Black’s behalf. “If he leaves tonight,” she said, “at least he’s leaving as a dancer.” Too right. Ballroom was the winner. And the news only gets better. My understanding is that, under new government regulations, in 2005 it will become illegal to hunt people who foxtrot. The sport is on the up and, at the very least, Black can proudly say that he was part of that.

GILES SMITH RETURNS ON THURSDAY