Motsi Mabuse says that if she had been judging Strictly Come Dancing this weekend she might have opted to save Max George which would have meant the elimination of early series favourite Maisie Smith.

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Motsi, however, is isolating after an urgent trip back to Germany when her dance school was targeted by burglars and police were involved. Her temporary replacement on the judging panel, Anton du Beke, opted to save EastEnders actress Maisie.

Motsi explained to BBC Radio 2: "I saw that Max had a very difficult routine, he had to control himself quite a lot. If we remember last week with The Simpsons he was all jolly and I think he liked that role and this time he had to be back in control."

But Motsi was watching Max and professional partner Dianne Buswell from home, like everyone else, as they danced an American Smooth to It Had To Be You by Harry Connick Jr.

Craig Revel Horwood voted to save Maisie, so if Motsi had voted to save Max it would have been head judge Shirley Ballas' decision and she said she would have saved Max.

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Motsi said: "I'm stuck here, I'm almost like Shirley, watching from the outside, maybe I might have saved Max. But you cannot see from the TV screen as well as you can sitting there and being a judge."

Maisie, 19, has endured some criticism for being over-confident and for having a background in performance (she won the 2019 Children in Need Strictly special). Conversely, many Strictly Come Dancing fans believe she is being treated harshly for those same reasons.

Maisie and partner Gorka Marquez scored 24 points for her Cha Cha to Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which included an 8 from Shirley, while Max scored 20 points in total, with a 7 from Shirley.

Meanwhile, Motsi gave some background about why she rushed back to Germany. She had worked with police to "solve the crime" at her dance school and would be improving security.

Motsi said on Instagram: "Unfortunately we have no good news. someone tried to break into our school. We are working with the police to solve this crime. We know we have been targeted on purpose, and we will improve security in our school that this will not happen again."

Motsi runs the Motsi Mabuse Taunus Tanzschule dance school near Franfurt with her husband, professional dancer Evgenij Voznyuk.

Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC One on Saturday 16th September.

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