WHITCHURCH’S professional dancer AJ Pritchard is off to a flying start on Strictly Come Dancing with partner Mollie King.

The show on Saturday saw them perform the jive to Good Golly Miss Molly’ by Little Richard and they scored a total of 23 points.

This placed them sixth on the leaderboard out of the 15 couples.

The judges were impressed with AJ, 22, and the 30-year-old from the all-girls’ group The Saturdays.

Bruno Tonioli scored the duo a six. He said: “I love the way you want to do it out there, that you want to impress – but when you dance with a partner on the Jive, you have to wait for the pull... you have to work on your partnership a bit more.

“Because as they say – it takes two to tango, and to jive, and to waltz, and to quickstep.”

Craig Revel Horwood scored them a low four but felt they had the right rhythm for the jive.

“It is true, you need to react to AJ’s lead. It was a little bit flat-footed and a little bit blocky for me but you have fantastic rhythm, and that’s a great start,” he added.

Darcey Bussell gave the couple a six and commented: “I just think you’ll get stronger and the attack will be there.

“The jive is a hard dance to deliver, and you did it with style, so well done.”

The highest score to the couple was given by Shirley Ballas with a seven.

She said: “I’m going to agree with everybody else about the connection and the lead.”

She told Mollie: “You could probably benefit by rotating your body a little bit more but generally overall, it had basic steps in, basic fundamentals. I thought you did a very, very good job. I enjoyed it. Well done.”