ADMITTEDLY, it's not on a par with accepting you have a problem with alcohol, or announcing that you're sleeping with your girlfriend's mother (neither of which I have any experience of) but it's painful to have to say it anyway: I've rather enjoyed Dancing On Ice.
I'm sure somewhere, back in the early archives of the blog, you'll find me letting rip about it being yet another crap, celebrity-fuelled waste of broadcasting time. I admit it, I was wrong. My opposition and general apathy towards celebrity sing-offs, dance-offs, dress-ups and wife-swaps still stands. But Dancing On Ice is the exception.
And it's Chris Fountain that's done it for me. Teenage girls have swooned for him and middle-aged women have talked about mothering him, but, for me, he's proof that Dancing On Ice is perhaps the one celebrity programme (Big Brother included) where celebrities are taken totally from their comfort zone and exposed if they don't try hard.
A couple of years ago, Chris - whose character Justin in Hollyoaks is actually one of the most annoying and overplayed in the soap - appeared in a celebrity sing off which I think was called The Two Of Us - I think it was about duets, although my main memory of it is thinking it was just an excuse to have Vernon Kay and Tess Daley presenting together.
It's only when you compare that, with Chris grizzling over not performing a song too well, to him then using a table as a prop on a skating rink in front of a live audience, that the penny drops. Dancing on Ice is actually hard work. Singing in a studio, or even ballroom dancing, doesn't come close. On ice, you're on skates. It's a whole new world, to quote a song ruined by countless celebrity duets.
Of course, it isn't just Chris Fountain. The others have thrown absolutley everything at it, learnin to fly around the ice as though they've done it since birth. Watch some celebrity sing and I might stop eating my tea for a second to say to my girlfriend that they've got a good voice. Watch a celebrity throw a partner in the air and catch them while still moving on what essentially are boots with sharp blades underneath them, and I run the risk of food falling out of mouth as I stare agog at what they're doing.
I was mocking about ITV clearing out its Sunday schedule for this programme. I was wrong. As celebrity -offs go, it's the best yet.
The final starts at 7pm and runs through until 9pm.
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