GOOD GRIEF, has it come to this?

If we’re talking about grand announcements, I’m the sort of bloke who, once upon a time, couldn’t wait to hear who’d made the latest England squad or topped the charts.

And now? Now I get excited when I hear the latest line-up for Strictly Come Dancing.

Dear God.

I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t even like Strictly that much. I find Sir Brucie cringe-making, bless him, and dancing bores me rigid. Besides, it’s all so technical that as a non-expert viewer I’m incapable of telling a good performance from a bad one. Unless, say, Robbie Savage falls flat on his face, in which case that would obviously be very good indeed, especially if it really hurt.

But yes, I got excited when I heard the list of celebs taking part this year. And why? Because I’d genuinely heard of every one of them. There wasn’t a single name that had me going: “Who the hell’s that?” Nope, not even the ones off Daybreak and Waterloo Road.

Now, the word I need to emphasise in that previous paragraph is “genuinely”. Because, between you and me, sometime I’ve been known to exaggerate my expertise just a tad. Sometimes, to save face, I’ll just pretend to recognise every name in a celebrity reality show line-up. Particularly when I’m on the radio.

As Britain’s fourth best TV critic, I’ll be asked to come on and talk about a line-up, and the host will go: “But these people aren’t celebrities are they, Mike? Half of them I’ve never heard of.”

And, bored with this tired old question, I’ll immediately trot out a mini biography of each one, just to show the presenter how clued-up I am. Pathetic, I know.

Truth is, there are usually several names in any line-up that I haven’t heard of either. But, anticipating the question and wanting to sound dead clever on air, I’ll have sneakily looked them up beforehand on Wikipedia.

And we all know Wikipedia is 100 per cent reliable, don’t we..?

So, good luck this year to our famous dancefloor celebs. Particularly Russell Grant, star of Four Weddings And A Funeral, Rory Bremner, ex-captain of Leeds United, and dear old Lulu, the elephant who once pooed on the floor on Blue Peter.

* Read Mike every day in the Daily Star and every weekend in the Daily Express Saturday magazine.