Strictly Come Dancing: what if there's a tie?

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

I was sitting watching Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday and a thought suddenly came to me. What happens if all 3 or all 4 couples end up with the same number of points?

It's not such an implausible scenario and one that Bruce and Tess never allude to, which leads me to believe that there could be the potential to rig something.

Here comes the anorak part of this post, but please bear with me.

For argument's sake, let's say that next week Rachel and Vincent come top (3 points), Lisa and Brendan are second (2 points) and Tom and Camilla are bottom (1 point).

Now the rules say that the other half of the score is made up of public vote, so if Tom Chambers is most popular he gets 3 points. I have a feeling that Rachel Stevens is least popular so she ends up with 1 point and Lisa Snowdon 2 for being in the middle.

Now my maths isn't up to Calculus level, but even I can work out that all 3 couples then end up with 4 points each. That's a 3-way tie, isn't it?

Surely they can't have a three-couple dance-off, can they? How do they separate them? I can't believe this has never happened before or that the BBC haven't thought about it. I think we must be told...