Dancing On Ice 7 – Week 5

Thank God for Pop Week! I for one was getting bored of routine after routine after routine to experimental jazz.

Jennifer Ellison & Daniel Whiston: Never in my life have I seen such lacklustre voguing as I witnessed in this routine from Daniel Whiston. Not even from Richard in Big Brother 7, who Vogued like Helen Daniels doing martial arts. Tragically for Daniel Whiston, his failure in the arena of Voguing was shown up three times within the space of a few hours of him delivering out to the Universe. First by his skating partner who, whilst steadfastly committed to beigeness and looking more like Jean Boht in Bread than the Queen Of Pop, delivered a stronger performance by far. Secondly by Madonna herself who Vogued her way around the Superbowl before 100 million people, most of whom were on my twitterfeed going “WHAT IS THIS AMERICAN SOCCER IT’S SO BORING!” for about three hours beforehand, God bless them. And thirdly by…well…we’ll get to him later, but let’s just say you didn’t have to wait much longer before finding a professional skater who thoroughly embraced the performance of gay iconography by a pop diva this week. Like, two routines longer?

SAMANDMARK & Alexandra Schauman: I guess it was never going to be incredibly likely that SAMANDMARK could hold up a strong vote-count where MARKANDSAM didn’t and that fact, combined with a performance position status throughout the series that would make even Alex Jones go “hoo boy, you’re getting screwed over here badly. Come and play Barney & Friends with me in my sandpit and we’ll forget this mean old show. BAGSY ME BE BABY BOP!”, contrived together to buy SAMANDMARK his first Skate-Off Slot of the series despite being (per Katarina) A SURPRISE EGG! Of course there were other factors in play as well. The usual Internet ments have blamed Torvill & Dean slopping out a fairly uninspired routine for him, but I have to say I place the blame for his almost-departure fairly and squarely on that THING on his head. The audience probably spent the whole routine wondering why the show was acting like Richard Branson sand “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. Or maybe everyone was saving up their money for the “Buy Alexandra A Sports Bra” fund, given that her funbags were flying around like someone trying to ride a pogo stick on a trampoline.

Charlene Tilton & Beaver Teeth: Sometimes, once or twice in a series, a routine comes along that redefines a series of Dancing On Ice. A dance that is not remembered for its technical merit, or the evocative performances of its interpreters, or the creativity of the choreography, or the feats of daring-do performed in lifts or jumps or spins or forward rolls or whatever, but for just how FUCKING GAY it is. And so it was that Charlene Tilton’s routine this week began with Beaver Teeth bellowing “THE GODS HAVE SPOKEN! I’LL BE LADY GAGA!” as the gauntlet of Poker Face was laid at the door of Dallas’ Poison Dwarf. And so it was that hair plonked the world’s worst wig on her head, wardrobe crowbarred her into a giant blue bodysuit that made her look like Beanbag Chair Smurf, and Dean serviced her with choreography that required her to, by my estimate, spend 50% of her time marching around on the spot and 50 of her time mid-air trying to prise open her own stubborn vagina like a lobster claw. All whilst Beaver Teeth was swirling around having a GAYGASM. Camp isn’t elegant, camp isn’t neat, but camp is this and camp is what drives me forward on reality tv a good 70% of the time. And so it was that all good things had to die, and Charlene Tilton had to be eliminated, whilst thanking every single person on the show 70 times at 50mph whilst Phillip frantically tried to shut her up, because they’d wasted 75% of the Results Show on dead air proceeding a foregone conclusion. A little light just went out of this series ladies and gentlemen. But not before Beaver Teeth coined the term “Gagatastic”.

Sebastien Foucan & Brioche Delcourt: Madonna. Lady Gaga. Wham!. Scissor Sisters. I mean, seriously this week was blatantly going to be Gay Week until One Direction’s management nixed it because they’re waiting for the third album campaign before getting desperate enough to out the group’s homosexual member for Progressive Points (I’m guessing the Irish One, but I hear they’re all bumming Nick Grimshaw on the regular, totally, I think I read it on Digital Spy). Anyway, this week Sebastien was skating to that Scissor Sisters single that finally killed off their career once and for all, dragged into the nexus of an Event Horizon created by testing the limits of just how many times you can rhyme “fire” with “desire” in one song. So avant-garde, so Sebastien. And of course, because this was Sebastien he had to TEST THE LIMITS OF ICE-DANCE as well, as he tried to be the first person to…I don’t know, do a jump or something. Whatever it was, they clearly had to pay Brioche the big bucks to get her to pretend to be impressed by it. I’m sure she definitely didn’t think she could do it blindfold with her hands tied together. Speaking of which…nice work from his hairdresser this week. As usual, I really liked Sebastien’s routine, apart from the experimental bits which looked…stupid? Maybe not as stupid as doing forward rolls everywhere, but still…

Heidi Range & Andrei Lipanov: I really love that the series-spanning storyline of the ex-Sugababe is mirroring that of the ex-Aotmic Kitten from last year. Not the drugs stuff obviously (OBVIOUSLY) or any of the stuff about missing her kids and wanting to show the world that she could learn an honest skill and blah blah cry cry etc etc, but the part where she ABSOLUTELY REFUSES TO EVER EVER EVER let her partner go. Remember when Katona had to skate on for the Ice-Pick and she almost ended up sliding directly into Estonia? I’m hoping for a repeat from Heidi, complete with her whinnying “IT’S MY FAULT, IT’S JUST ME BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!” as she slides off into Tallinn. Anyway, yes, this week it was obvious, once again, that Heidi isn’t really comfortable with the whole ice-skating thing yet. Also that the wardrobe department is still nursing its twin obsessions with Andrei and ugly chafing leather/pleather/rubber, the attractions of both of which continue to elude me. Also, Price Tag hasn’t got any less overplayed. The end.

Andy Whyment & Vicky Ogden: When this was on I was in the middle of cooking chilli and the instructions said “turn up the heat and add mince”, so I just watched Charlene & Beaver Teeth’s routine again. TRUE STORY.

Chemmy Alcott & Sean Rice: My favourite Chemmy related thing this week was all the namedropping. Admittedly it was only of Mike Tindall and (my least favourite member of the Royal Family, apart from maybe Prince Harry) Zara Phillips, but the sheer FORCE of it was quite impressive. They had t-shirts with her name on and everything. Of course they didn’t wind up trending on twitter (so far as I’m aware) so their appearance was a complete waste of time. Outside of very minor royals, the major storyline for Chemmy this week was revisiting her disastrous nun-based farrago of last week, when Katarina told her never ever ever to do lifts again because they made her look like a roll of carpet that Sean was hurling around. Torvill & Dean’s belated response to this (after one week of using her as a weapon to get rid of Corey?) – “Really when Katarina said that Chemmy shouldn’t be doing lifts, they meant she should be doing lifts”. I mean, the phrasing was maybe slightly different, but that was the gist of it. So of course Torvill & Dean choreographed in a load of lifts for Chemmy, and they still looked kind of clumsy and crap, and Katarina called them out on it AGAIN, GLORIOUSLY, but…it looked less hideous and awful than it did two weeks ago so…hooray? Hooray for Chemmy! I really just want to see her bombing around the ice at 100mph grinning like a nutter, but…it appears she’s here so they can prove some stuff about REAL WOMEN or something, because this ITV and when are they ever not doing that. Woo.

Matthew Wolfenden & Nina Ulanova: So this was officially a “Cooling Off” Week for Matthew. I mean, let’s face it, they were always going to score Jorgie better than him this week, because that’s how reality tv storylining works, even on this show. But him skipping two days of training and then somehow giving a really lacklustre performance to “The Look Of Love” somehow of all songs, futzing around the ice looking more like Young Fester in “The Addams Family : The College Years” must have really helped the storyboarding department. Not that they bothered to tell anyone other than Katarina, who actually decided to score him down, unlike Louie “PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE!” Spence, who granted 8.5 to a man who skated around ashen-faced looking like he was going to throw up any second. But heaven forbid Sebastien skate with no expression to a song with lyrics about having no expression. But whatever, I’m over that, I’m very comitted to this reliably blank section of the show taking up at least a third of the final. He might, I don’t know, drop Nina on her face again or something. At least he admitted this went a bit tits-up this week, so that’s worth some bonus points.

Chico & Jodeyne Higgins: I know it’s Chico, and I know he’s incredibly annoying (I can’t believe he resurrected “Positive Mental Attitude” this week. I thought we’d staked that, decapitated it, and buried it at a crossroads somewhere around 2003) and I know that even by this show’s standards he’s passed through the Roman Alphabet and all the way into the Cyrillic one in terms of celebrity status, but every time Gubba takes pot-shots at how busy his diary is and how few fans he has, part of me gets very defensive on Chico’s behalf. I mean he’s surely more famous than “that man who ran up a girder in that Bond Film”. And even that’s better than that guy who did Dancing With The Stars because he got his nob out in the Sex And The City. And almost won. Why make fun of Chico? Oh right, because it’s fun. This week Chico was dancing to S Club 7, more specifically “Don’t Stop Movin'”, which for some reason brought out all of Chico’s old stripper moves, which I’m sure none of us wanted to see ever again. Particularly Jodeyne, who wanted to make us very aware that she’d counted every second where he wasn’t touching her and was very proud of him for it and also could Dean make sure he did this EVEN MORE next week?

Rosemary Conley & Mark Hanretty & OH MY GOD KATARINA WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!: Not since the days of Zoe Salmon getting a 6.0 from a lust-crazed Ruthie Henshall has a score on this show baffled me SO MUCH. I have thought long and hard, and have come to the conclusion that is solely to troll Torvill & Dean. Possibly for undermining her wise teachings to Chemmy, possibly because she’s bored of them and the whole show (and who could blame her?) and also possibly because that’s just who she is. Maybe she detected the note of slightly juvenile sniggering behind Jayne saying that she was going to make Rosemary do a really flirty and seductive routine to this week and wanted to FIGHT BACK on behalf of mature women everywhere? Anyway, whatever it was, she wound up giving Rosemary Conley a 7 for a routine which consisted of her feeding a man grapes than doing amateur chiropractic work on herself across his knee, as Louie gave her 4.5, and Robin 5.0, with both of them clearly feeling generous for doing so. She’s so full of mysteries…

Jorgie Porter & Matt Evers: I don’t know how long I want to dwell on Christopher Dean openly making Jorgie Porter act out his sexual fantasies about (I’m going to be charitable, watch me) adult women wearing schoolgirl uniforms on national television. Poor…whoever he’s shagging currently. Is it Karen? I’ve lost track. I would say “poor Torvill” at this point but…it’s gone past the point where I can’t consider her complicit. I’m sure he thinks he was being universal by getting Matt Evers to dress up as a “naughty schoolboy”/”hot young teacher” as well, but the make-up people appear to have misread “fresh-faced” as “ventriloquists dummy”, so I can’t even join in on that score. Anyway, hooray for somebody else topping the leaderboard, and only five weeks in as well. She’s also now favourite with the bookies but I’m not really sure about that. The Hollyoaks Vote has never really delivered on any of these shows before. We shall see. But first? (*checks papers*) Oh Jesus Wept it’s “Love Week”… *despairs*