THE weekend cannot come soon enough for Dennis Taylor. Having so narrowly escaped eviction in the Strictly Come Dancing phone vote, he goes into this week’s contest knowing, deep down, that he is dancing at the last-chance saloon. It was no surprise to learn, during one of BBC Two’s nightly, behind-the-scenes updates, that on Sunday, while his fellow contestants were at home, taking the weight off their cha-cha-chas, Taylor had gone “straight back into the training studio”.

The former snooker world champion clearly understands the size of the task ahead, if he is to silence the ballroom boo-boys and demonstrate categorically that the rhythm he generated early in the series was no flash in a sequinned pan.

First and foremost, Taylor will need to set aside the feelings of resentment understandably generated in him by the judges’ most recent comments. True, his paso doble to the classic rock anthem by Survivor was, in places, more ear of the pig than Eye Of The Tiger. But it could hardly have prepared him for the personal nature of the invective that followed. “It knocked me for six,” Taylor confessed. “When you play snooker, you never really get criticism like that.”

No, indeed — nor in many other professions. Clearly, the line on acceptable human comment was wildly overstepped by Craig Revel Horwood when he told Taylor: “You’re starting to rival Quentin Wilson.” At this point, cognoscenti of the pro-celebrity ballroom scene will have turned ashen and started clutching their faces in appalled horror. During a brief and unhappy stint on the previous series of Strictly Come Dancing , Wilson revealed himself to be to ballroom dancing what a three-legged donkey is to — well, ballroom dancing.

Accordingly, in the context of dance criticism, to invoke a comparison with Wilson is to leap directly at the jugular. You couldn’t cause greater affront if you attacked the way one of the male professionals had done his make-up. When you question a man’s talents in the ballroom, by implication you question the man and an overwhelmingly hurt Taylor was having none of it. “There’s criticism,” he pointed out, “and there’ s being nasty.”

He responded by turning the tables. “What I’m going to do with Craig is buy him a snooker cue and see what he can do with that in five days,” he said. At this stage in the competition’s history, I would hazard, there will be millions of viewers (and not only fans of Taylor) with a clear idea about what the waspish Craig could do with a snooker cue and a large number who would be happy to take hold of the cue and do it for him. But Taylor, being above all a dignified man, is merely proposing a snooker match early next week.

Revel Horwood has, gamely if hesitantly, accepted. It is an encounter to relish. But Taylor needs to put all that out of his mind and concentrate on the more significant appointment that awaits him: with destiny on Saturday evening.

While Taylor clings on, sport’s triple-pronged attack on Strictly Come Dancing glory remains in motion. Still standing with Taylor are Darren Gough, the cricketer, and Colin Jackson, the former sprint hurdler, and all three of these sporting legends can pride themselves that they have seen off Gloria Hunniford. Whatever else happens, they’ll always have that to tell the grandchildren.

Jackson has cut a swath through this tournament and may yet cut a wider one. “I’ve been holding back in my jumps,” he reported ominously, suggesting that there may be more to come from him.

Gough, though, has been the big revelation. On Saturday, wearing a glittery black top, which made it look as if the giant fairy of fortune had sneezed on his shoulder, he became the first Yorkshire paceman to be acclaimed for “the best paso doble of the night” in a televised context. “Darren,” Arlene Phillips breathed, “you must have been a dancer in a former life.” We ’ll take that as a compliment.

Chuffed to his diamondstudded earlobes, Gough told Claudia Winkleman on Tuesday: “I’ve started preparing as I would for a Test match. I hit it hard for three days, then just go through the basics on the Thursday and Friday, so I’ve got that edge factor for the Saturday.” Interesting, although, by Saturday, a Test match can sometimes be over, making it a risky time to aim to peak.

Still, we trust Gough to know his body in this respect. We hope so, anyway, because if all continues to go well, he could soon be in a position to loosen the showbiz stranglehold on pro-celebrity dancing’s most coveted prize, succeeding where dancers of the quality of Roger Black, Denise Lewis and Martin “Chariots” Offiah have failed. Remember, too, that in the history of Strictly Come Dancing (two years), nobody has carried away the trophy who wasn ’t manifestly and undeniably a woman.

That’s got to be a worry for the likes of Taylor and Gough, not least with Zoe Ball in the kind of form she is showing and with Patsy Palmer, once of EastEnders, ready to mop up anything that Ball spills. But stranger things have happened.