STRICTLY is like football. With sequins. Week in, week out, loyal fans lap up the drama, the thrills and skills, the heartbreak, the injuries, the team work, the losses, the wins - and spend half the year waiting for it to start all over again.

Strictly Come Dancing is three months of escapism, old-school glamour and beautiful people lighting up our autumn Saturday evenings. It’s a thrilling showcase of world-class dance and feelgood ‘journeys’, and we’re all armchair judges, even if we don’t know a fleckerl from a syncopated beat.

But this year - the 20th anniversary of the hit BBC show - it feels tainted. Around this time Strictly usually starts to reveal its celebrity line-up for the new series, in tantalising drip feeds. Instead, shocking revelations and allegations have come thick and fast, tarnishing the show everyone loves.

This week former contestant Will Bayley said he suffered serious injury while performing a jump in rehearsals, and claimed there was “no duty of care”. The Paralympian is the latest star to speak about his experiences on the show. Actor Amanda Abbington has described her dance partner Giovanni Pernice’s behaviour as “abusive and cruel”. He denies the claims. And professional dancer Graziano Di Prima left the show after allegations about his treatment of Love Island star Zara McDermott.

The BBC unveiled its annual report on Tuesday amid a storm of negative stories about the flagship programme. Director General Tim Davie said that while there is inevitably “competitiveness, hard work and the will to do well” on the show, “there are limits and the line should never be crossed”. Acknowledging that “Strictly is a wonderful show” he told journalists that if someone feels there is something wrong it will be taken seriously and dealt with.

So the show goes on, with new protocols, including chaperones in training rooms. There’s talk of intimacy coaches too. Will this affect the chemistry of partnerships or will it all settle down once the series gets underway?

Strictly is a juggernaut and none of its stars are bigger than the show itself. But mud sticks, even to the glitter ball. And for couples stepping onto the dancefloor this year, there’s bound to be a new level of trepidation.

I’ve interviewed several Strictly professionals over the years and, as charming and fun as they are, they all want to win. These people are elite athletes, trained from childhood to be world champions. They’re steely-eyed products of a gruelling regime where competition is fierce and winning is everything. It’s a mysterious world and for those thrust into it, albeit in the Strictly bubble, it must be a massive culture shock. What we see on Strictly are feelgood vignettes; we become emotionally invested in the big happy family, and when couples pay tearful tributes to each other and pledge to be friends for life, it stirs the soul. But I suspect very few keep in touch.

It is contestants who appear to be the victims in recent allegations, and if behaviour has been unacceptable it should absolutely be dealt with. But there should be a duty of care to the professionals too. Their job is brutal: teaching novices to dance, often to a ridiculously high standard, in an intense environment, while delivering Saturday night sparkle, nurturing their partners (and I’m sure some celebs can be nightmares to work with) and impressing the judges, and producers, with the aim of reaching the final and lifting the glitter ball trophy. They might be super-human, and built like race horses, but they’re fallible. I’d say the pros need a chaperone to protect them too.

Serious allegations aside, let’s hope we don’t have a tiresome stream of former contestants moaning that their partner once got a bit cross, or that they stubbed a toe doing the cha-cha-cha. Strictly is beloved Saturday night entertainment, with a huge fanbase of all ages. As Tim Davie said, it brings joy to a lot of people. While it’s never been the cosy TV family we like to think it is, it would be a terrible shame if it has had its last dance.