Strictly Come Dancing’s Mr Nasty Craig Revel Horwood has slammed his fellow judges for being too generous with their scoring.

Celebrity contestants on the BBC show know that Craig is the person hardest to impress on the judging panel and refuses to drop his high standards, despite his colleagues dishing out eights, nines, and even 10s on a regular basis.

He told The Sun: “There is a lot of competition this year and because the level is so high I have to be nit-picky – I mean someone’s got to be.

“If it was up to the other judges it would just be a score of nine, nine, nine, nine, nines the whole time and it would be as dull as dishwater. Not every dance is worth a nine.”

Darcey Bussell, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli have been much more generous with their scoring of this year’s routines, with Len even awarding Ed Balls’ salsa an eight at the weekend – a dance that drew just four points from Craig.

He also complained that the professional dancers needed to stop trying to cover up their partners’ mistakes.

“I feel some of the pro dancers are protecting their partners at the moment,” moaned Craig.

“It’s like I said a couple of Saturdays ago, Natalie Lowe could have put more Rumba in for Greg Rutherford but she was protecting him because his hip action isn’t particularly good so she tried to make him look better than he is.”