One of my favourite shows to watch on a Sunday night had to be ‘Dancing on Ice’ it gets better and better every year with the quality of skating improving each time.
Presented by Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield and featuring some great performances and choreography from top Ice Skating professionals Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean it was one of the most watched shows at the weekends.
The final celebrities left in the competition this time around were:
- Hollyoaks star Chris Fountain (he was my favourite to win)
- retired tennis player Greg Rusedski (who is wonderfully clumsy on the ice)
- pop star Gareth Gates
- singer Suzanne Shaw
- Coronation Street star Zaraah Abrahams who was a newcomer to the competition after Michael Underwood broke his ankle.
As I watched each week, I became quite fond of all the contestants left in the competition, they all put everything they had into their performances and even Greg who is hilarious on the ice still manages to push his performance to the max every week. The judges were often brutally honest and in my opinion gave quite low scores this year for fantastic performances, Suzanne Shaw’s routine one week sparked fury between several of the judges and rightly so after Suzanne was given stupidly low marks for an amazing performance.
The judge panel itself is made up of the following people:
- Robin Cousins - One of Britain’s best individual skater’s.
- Nicky Slater - Competed as a pro ice skater with resident judge Karen Barber.
- Karen Barber - Resident Coach and appeared as Nicky Slater’s partner in the Olympics.
- Jason Gardiner - Choreographer, actor and dancer Jason is the judge with the razor sharp tongue who we all love to hate.
- Ruthie Henshall - Olivier award winner who has starred in many west end musicals.
It was great to see Torvill and Dean once again performing some stunning routines together and equally interesting to watch as they take the skaters under their wing and put them through their paces during the week in preparation for the live show.
Full cast list for Dancing on Ice 2008: Aggie MacKenzie, Andrei Lipanov, Chris Fountain, Daniel Whiston, Frankie Poultney, Fred Palascak, Fred Palascak, Gareth Gates, Greg Rusedski, Jason Gardiner, Karen Barber, Kristina Lenko, Linda Lusardi, Maria Filippov, Matt Evers, Melanie Lambert, Michael Underwood, Natalie Pinkham, Nicky Slater, Pavel Aubrecht, Robin Cousins, Ruthie Henshall, Samantha Mumba, Sarah Greene, Sergey Malyshev, Steve Backley, Susie Lipanova, Suzanne Shaw, Tim Vincent, Victoria Borzenkova, Zaraah Abrahams.