Brendan Cole has said that BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing can never compete with ITV’s X Factor, because they don’t have enough money.

Cole told Metro: “If the BBC want to compete with X Factor it is down to budgets. ITV have massive budgets, massive advertising revenues.

“They got millions off the advertising and not to mention from the ten million phone calls. It’s incredible what kind of budgets they have and they produce a show to reflect that.

“With the BBC we do a show that the public pay for. You’re never going to be able to compete on that scale.”

He added: “X Factor’s got the money and they can spend it on Robbie Williams and Whitney Houston.

“For the most part BBC do a good job. If producers had bigger budgets they could do a whole lot more.

“We have world-class dancers, a good production unit, I say take it back to the way it used to be. Smaller maybe. Too many judges can spoil the mix.”