Dancing On Ice 7 – Week 3

As is only appropriate for ITV Movies, a bunch of tired old repeats from about 20 years ago.

Chico & Jodeyne Higgins : And so, the Chico Silmani Self-Help bandwagon rolls on for another week. Fresh from the giddy high of receiving the first praise he’s ever got for anything ever in his entire life ever last week, he’s already come on leaps and bounds, and now is ready to show the world that’s there’s more to him than just “Chico Time”. I mean I knew that already, because I remember this, and how all eating disorders IMMEDIATELY DISAPPEARED afterwards but, you know, the public are fickle and have probably even forgotten how Chico is only bettered globally in the field of celebrity air-hostessing by Lisa Maffia and Amy Lame. As such he’ll just have to show us all his multi-faceted personality via the medium of ice-dance on ice. This week? LIP-SYNCING TO A POP CLASSIC WHILST DRESSED IN OUTLANDISH COSTUMES. Now let’s face it, this is a side of him we never got to see on X Factor ever. In other news, forcing Jodeyne into a US army uniform to perform Top Gun only makes the fact that this show is her ‘Nam more apparent. Next series, when she’s partnered with Arg from TOWIE and starts shivering and muttering about Charlie, don’t say I didn’t warn you. In further news…”Chicotito” *shakes head*

Rosemary Conley & Mark Hanretty: Only on this show would “going up a gear” be best achieved by skating to “Wind Beneath My Wings”. What fucking gear was she in before? Because it can’t have been reverse, because that would be…well impressive, because most of these people can’t skate forwards, let alone backwards. But still, the lie was committed to, and Rosemary BUSTED OUT ALL OVER (in Gubba’s dreams, the weird old perv) to Bette Midler. I like to think that in her head she was singing it to Mr Motivator. Or Fred The Weatherman. Or…I dunno, Denise. All her This Morning family who have definitely shown up to support her thus far because she was SO WELL LOVED. Anyway, Rosemary skated to the theme tune to Beaches, and didn’t die of viral cardiomyopathy on the way round, although there were points, especially in the lifts, where it looked like she was giving it a damn good go. And in the end, it was not enough for the judges, who commanded her to, no, really, LET GO AND GO WILD next week. I wonder which song will accompany this BURST OF ENERGY? Video Games? No Surprises? Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me? In other news : she did a woopsie in training. That’s age for you. In other news : Chris and Jayne still hate her.

SAMANDMARK & Alexandra Schulman: To be honest I don’t really want to watch this routine again, or even think about it. I just want to watch Katarina pretending to be a cuddly kung-fu panda, wafting around vaguely and hypnotically, forever. This isn’t JUST because I was hoping the costumes that he and Alexandra were wearing made me hope for The Karate Kid, and hence Joe Esposito. There’s not enough Joe Esposito on these shows, that’s what I’ve always thought. You’d think he’d be a natural fit for the ITV1 audience. I could just about have accepted a routine to Kung Fu Panda if he had in fact been dressed as an actual panda but as it was, even with Alexandra over-acting the BEJESUS out of it, I was left unmoved. I don’t know why nobody noticed that, bad-ass backflip aside he looked like he fully expected to fall over the entire way round is beyond me, but I guess Louie was too busy demonstrating his preferred fisting technique to us all to bring it up. (What? Fisting is another word for punching!)

Chemmy Allcott & Sean Rice: I really have held off from whinging about the film-choices for as long as I can, but who the wiggins associates Rescue Me with Sister Act? My Guy, yes. I Will Follow Him, yes. Maybe even Heat Wave. But Rescue Me? Eh. I mean, I appreciate the effort to get Chemmy to perform as a stripping ice-skating nun (and yes, she was right, it was better in the habit) but…no. Anyway, the story of Chemmy this week was her over-reaching herself utterly, committing herself to a lift that there was no way on Earth she could do, then awkwardly flopping around on Sean’s shoulder like a cross between Big-Mouth Billy Bass and someone awkwardly failing at planking. Then getting weirdly defensive and “WELL AT LEAST I TRIED! AT LEAST I WAS BRAVE AND PUSHED MYSELF!” about it. Yes you did Chemmy, and it sucked. The lesson here being “never try”. Fortunately for Chemmy, it sounded a bit like Katarina called her fat, or something, or at least you could interpret it that way if you wanted to be outraged, so she escaped the bottom two. Hopefully next week she gets choreography without quite so many things she can’t actually do in it. In other news : I’ve never seen anyone trolling harder to be on TV Burp than Phillip when he said “DID YOU HAVE TROUBLE GETTING IT UP?!?!??!” or whatever to Sean Rice. Such a try-hard and the show’s not even airing currently.

Corey Feldman & THE THING & Brooke Castille: Does anyone have a clue what’s going on with Corey and this show? To summarise, he did a routine themed around Stand By Me, a film he was in so…should theoretically have somewhat accurate memories of, talked a lot about dead people he knew, then spent the whole routine doing Michael Jackson dance moves, with giant train-tracks in the background, suggesting some sort of weird time travel revisionist version of the film wherein the corpse by the tracks is in fact the King Of Pop. “Why?” is a question you would ask yourself, unless you were Corey, who clearly has never asked “why?” in his life, the primary evidence for which fact being THAT THING sat on his forehead. I feel sorry for Brooke, genuinely and sincerely, because the level of high-maintenance queenery displayed by Corey in that TITANIC STROP he threw after the judges scores came in is not anything any human being should deal with, especially with Brooke’s high levels of natural positivity. And in fairness, she didn’t – she just dumped him on Pixie-Witch Frankie to deal with. Attagirl. I like to think Frankie One-Name was dripping poison in his ear, making him one of her flying monkeys.

Jennifer Ellison & Daniel Whiston: I have to give props to Jennifer Ellison, because it takes balls to try to steal the limelight with THAT LEVEL of injury porn going on. I half expected her to skate out in a full body cast. That’ll teach Daniel Whiston to ever think HE was the star of this partnership. I kind of wish Daniel had insisted on a last-minute lyric change so they would be skating to the song “WHISTON!” from the movie Dreamgirls. And then dressed Fred Haversack up in a fat suit as Effie White for a ONE NIGHT ONLY (LOL, DO YOU SEE?) cameo. The routine? Was fine, and made good use of quite elegant skating and emotive choreography to hide the fact that she was in near-crippling tear-inducing pain throughout. And quite right too. As Chris and Jayne pointed out, if they didn’t puncture a lung on a fractured rib, then they just weren’t SKATING HARD ENOUGH.

MARKANDSAM & Frankie: Oh good, a Blues Brothers routine. I haven’t seen enough of these from inept male contestants on reality shows in my life time. John Belushi would be turning in his grave if he could build up the friction. I do like that Frankie decided to try to avert the Belushi-Wrath by turning up as an anorexic Roy Orbison. I love that there was so little to this routine (although…it’s hardly alone in being content light this week let’s face it…) that Katarina decided to take offence ON BEHALF OF ICE for how little was going on. I guess they feel they’ve got to take cues from Strictly given that it is now a RATINGS JUGGERNAUT THAT DESTROYED X FACTOR (/beat it by a bit, like, twice?) but at least when they faff around at the beginning of routines on that show they are notionally on the same type of surface that they’re supposed to be performing on throughout. This week was just a bit like Strictly decided to start a routine with one of the contestants splashing around in a kid’s paddling pool. (And who knows, maybe Russell would have done that, given another week?). Anyway, this routine, in the best tradition of all rubbish contrived reality tv feuds, saw the end of the BATTLE OF SAMANDMARK VS MARKANDSAM, as MARKANDSAM went home. Sigh. I’ll remember them…well, mostly like this, but also a bit from this show. Maybe? (LOL at Caroline Flack getting RIGHT in there, the demented pervert).

Jorgie Porter & Matt Evers’ Arse: Hands up everyone who had “with a sexy secretary” as Matt Evers’ Ultimate Dancing On Ice Fantasy Routine? Yeah, hands down, you’re lying. For the record, I’m sort of a secretary, in that I work in administration in my very real life outside of this blog which definitely exists, so I would just like to have on record that I am free for any and all future routine with Matt Evers ON ICE, performing his fantasies. AHEM. That said, Jorgie continued her glorious reign as undisputed “Best Girl At Skating And Thing” this week, although let’s be honest, it’d be really hard to find more than about 5 words to say about any of the actual routines this week. I’ll defer to Gubba for this one : “Jorgie has unusually long fingers. Casanova had long fingers as well. Maybe it’s no coincidence as well that her soap character is always chasing the opposite sex”. (DOES THIS MAN REALISE THAT HIS MICROPHONE IS ON? EVER? AT ALL?) Personally I enjoyed the part of 9 To 5 where Dolly Parton did the doggy paddle at a typewriter, I definitely did. Well done on recreating it, Jorgie.

Matthew Wolfenden & Nina Ulanova: Dear Robin : if you’re having trouble telling who is the celebrity and who is the professional (and with the calibre of participants…you could forgive him), I’d suggest that the pro ice-skater is probably the one shouting “I AM MORE AFRAID OF MICROPHONE THAN OF ICE SKATE YES? *wink wink*”. I mean I wish I lived in a world where celebrities communicated like that, but we’re not quite there yet. Sadly, this is still Earth. Anyway, Movies Week rattled on through its leading male contender with an obligatory routine based on the disco end of John Travolta’s career. Hence a lot of sexy disco moves and an ill-fitting white suit and lots of pointing. And the odd SIDEWALK SLAM in training. Poor Nina. If she could communicate more accurately in English then maybe she could have had a lengthy VT full of tears and soulful gazing and…I dunno…a single wilted rose in a backlit vase or something. As it was we just got to watch her hip-bone hammered like a gong repeatedly. Poor Nina. In other news : HD is not kind to the whole nest of crows feet that live under Matthew’s eyes. I know he’s dedicated to the show, but SLEEP IS NECESSARY, no matter what Dean says.

Charlene Tilton & BEAVER TEETH And there you were thinking that Alexandra was going to be the most offensive pantomime of Oriental womanhood this evening. Although to fair them pulling at the sides of Charlene’s face til the Hollywood legend she resembled wasn’t so much Marilyn Monroe as Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s was probably accidental. Still, it was all another excuse for Beaver Teeth to play Big Gay Hollywood Dress-Up, and really, isn’t that what every week in their JOURNEY ON ICE is going to be about? To think that she almost got away with that almost utterly content-free skate as well, but bless Charlene if the first words out of her mouth once she was off the ice weren’t something like “LOL, THANKS JAYNE FOR TAKING OUT ALL THE ACTUAL CHOREOGRAPHY LIKE I ASKED YOU TO!”. Such a lack of artifice. I feel a bit sorry for her that she was in the Bottom Two, but soap blondes have trouble enough getting votes on these shows when the soap they’re in aired this millennium so…it’s hardly a surprise.

Sebastien Foucault & Brioche Delcourt: I remember spending most of last series thinking that Sam and Brioche hated one another, and…it’s kind of hard to escape that impression again this year. Maybe it’s just Brioche. Maybe that’s how she relates to other human beings. Whatever it is, the lovely frostiness between the pair of them, combined with Christopher Dean’s “avant-garde” choreography and their EVIL FOREIGN-NESS are turning the pair of them into the perfect series villains for me at this point. But I swear, have you seen anything more pretentious than this routine EVER on this show? And this is a show about ICE-DANCE I’ll remind you. The wibbly-wobbly music, the “cult classic” film, those tits running around in the background with masks on. All it needed was a giant projection of a crying clown shone out onto the ice and it would have been perfection. I think my favourite part of the whole awkwardness of this segment was Louie blatantly not realising that Sebastien is a proper actor nowadays, or at least considers himself one, and giving him the full “I KNOW YOU’RE NOT AN ACTOR BUT…” patronising treatment. Marvellous.

Andy Whyment & Vicky Ogden: Fucking hell, I hate Grease.

Heidi Range & Andrei Lipanov: And so we closed with the obligatory James Bond themed routine. It wouldn’t be “Movie Night” without one. Well, it would on Strictly, but they’re generally much better at doing interesting movie picks rather than the same old shit over and over and OVER again. This is why Movie Week is always the best week in Strictly nowadays, whereas this was…not the best week of this series. And there’s only been three of them. One of which had Laila Morse in. All I really remember of this routine other than it was…you know BETTER, and also for how amazing she looked in that gold, and also how I’d like to be able to blame Amelle for the death of the Sugababes in PEACE TWITTER, I DON’T CARE IF SHE SEEMS LIKE A NICE ENOUGH GIRL, is, of course, the attendant hilarity of when Heidi said that Andrei made her give him a blowy or something giggle giggle. Oh Dancing On Ice. Stay classy. Forever classy.