Goodbye then. I thoroughly enjoyed the show last night, although the overload of ad breaks and Andy's surprising elimination left a slightly sour taste in my mouth for the end of the show.

See you next year Lizzie!

I doubt it'll be as long as that.

I can't believe how many moaners I have seen on here the last couple of days. The show has pretty much gone back to its original format and people are still moaning.

The judging panel has improved and while I didn't mind Jason I do prefer Louie and think Katarina is a good addition too especially over Emma and what is the obsession with people saying they have never heard of this years celebs. I'm beginning to think everyone is living under rocks this year I would say there are more well known names than any other year.

Only ones I don't really know are Chemmy and Andy A I have heard of Sebastien briefly because of the freerunning so knew of him just not well and certainly most of the others seem to have been holding down decent careers of their own and not just famous for being a WAG or a reject from another reality show.

Do people honestly think they are going to get the bigger soap star names or bigger name British celebs its not going to happen. I notice when people are asked though they can never come up with a list of people they really want to appear so who are they expecting. Those celebs that I guess people want have no need to appear on a show like DOI and may not have the time to do so or want to take the risks involved.

The only problem I had was the volume. It must be kept infuriatingly high, because the iPod/club generation are going deaf with all the loud music they listen to.

I suppose you'd rather have some Yoof on the panel, which was the mistake SCD made when they substituted Arlene with Alesha.

Well I'd rather watch and listen to fifty-somethings with the knowledge and experience (and in T&D's case still great skating) than have someone young and hip on the show who frankly knows as much about the subject as my dog.

If you don't like it, don't watch it.

Bye then. Shut the door behind you on the way out

Absolutely. Anybody and everybody over forty-five should be taken out and shot.

Let's hear it for the Hollyoaks brigade!

I'm sticking with it but it would be good to see a different routine to Bolero - I would like to see Barnham as an alternative

That's actually a really good idea - whilst maybe judging isn't the best thing for Karen to be doing on the night (I liked her on the panel, and Nicky too, but those days are gone - and she did find it too hard to choose who went home each week) she is the one who is often most closely involved in the training (certainly as much, if not more so in some cases, as T and D). Often it is Robin who explains what the judges should be looking for that week, or the 'skill' if it's a skills week that the celebs should be demonstrating, but Karen could do it just as well. And we all know that she loves accentuating the positive improvements a contestant has made (and is good at finding a positive if there really wasn't really that much positive to start with!) so giving a little summary each week of the contestants progression might be what some of them need to boost their confidence.


Actually I thought it was blatantly obvious last night that they'd completely toned down the carrying of the female celebs this year. Last year was a joke - so many of the girls either just danced in place for 30 seconds before doing a little toe-pick step sequence/simple glide at best (Nadia being one of them!) or they were carried around in the air (Kerry!) for almost the entire performance. In some cases there was (rightly) marked improvement after that, but in some cases (again, Kerry) they were allowed to get away with the carrying/lift technique week after week.

But this year, right from the start, the girls actually skated - sometimes even solo - and were on the ice far more than they were in the air. Yes, there were lifts, but they were used much more sparingly.

Either someone realised last year that the Kerry-type lift routine was making a mockery of the show and had a little word in T and D's ear before this year started to make sure they didn't make that mistake again (no matter how bad the contestant!) or the fact that the judging panel now has the right proportion of skating judges means that T and D decided for themselves that last year's lift-heavy routines just wouldn't cut the mustard (especially with Katarina - I bet she isn't going to mince her words when she gets going!).

Now, obviously the flaw in my opinion is that we have only seen one half of the contestants, and arguable the stronger of the women celebs were on last night's show, and maybe that's why the routines were more skating based rather than lift based. Next week we have Rosemary and Laila... my theory about not so many lifts/getting rid of easy/lazy routines for the girls may get shot out of the water, lol!



I came from a position of only knowing of Louie what I'd seen in clips on Harry Hill's TV Burp - and no, I didn't like what I saw, found his OTT persona on the clips from the shows he was in before far too over-done for my taste. However, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, and so I tuned in last night - partly in trepidation, I will admit, but actually I was pleasantly surprised. Of course he's camp, and he's an entertainer by profession so it must be hard to rein it in completely, but in fact I thought he'd hit the mark almost perfectly. He made comments that were both constructive and relevant to the dancing/performance skills, and he did it without the nasty tone that was so much a part of Jason.

In other words, Louie proved that a gay/camp man can give constructive criticism without descending into bitching and forcing the persona he is known for in other shows onto a show where it would have been out of place. In fact, I'd say the far easier option would have been for Louie to have just been 'Pineapple' Louie on DOI (and if he'd have demanded that I'm sure the producers would have let him do it too) but from what I saw he was making a real effort to create a DOI-suitable persona and certainly understands that the Pineapple and DOI personas are not interchangeable.

So, all I'm saying is, give him a chance and don't let your preconceptions get in the way of a little objectivity! If you still don't like him on DOI then fine - no one likes everyone on any show - but everyone deserves a fair chance first.

I agree about Louis; he really had toned it down for DOI which was a pleasant surprise. I fully expected backflips and jazz hands but for Louis he was very calm and constructive.

I recorded the show to watch later so I could ff through the ad breaks and the general chat which made it much easier to watch. However, my main complaint with DOI is that T&D still do all the choreography which is becoming a bit samey and presumably they are still going to have the Bolero at the end which is getting totally boring. They had so many other great routines - surely it's time to use one of those instead of the eternal Bolero.:yawn:

Anyone got the viewing figures for the first show compared with last year?

I do not know who Corey Feldman is but read an article on him in the Daily Mail where he states he will name paedophiles who attacked him as a child in a new book. I find this really distasteful, if he has evidence of abuse he should go immediately to the police rather than try and make money out of it. Horrendous. I do not watch Childrens TV Shows so I really do not recognise a lot of the Dancing on Ice contestants this year!!!!

Yes I do that too now. I find the constant commercial breaks so irritating and give up in the end and just put a DVD in or watch BBC!!! Sadly, the commercial breaks seem to be getting more and more frequent on ITV and often it is the SAME AD repeated time and time again! Drives me nuts, I never buy the product that has been rammed down my throat!!! It is the same with the celeb guests. I was ill a few weeks ago and we had the same personality on This Morning, Lorraine, Loose Women etc! Ridiculous.

If you feel that way about it, why watch the programme?
Completely disagree with your final statement.

I would love to see Barnum too, Jayne & Chris did a short version of it in the very first series!
Having said that, the contestants and pros would probably prefer to do Bolero as it's such an honour to perform it in front of Jayne & Chris

Also Bolero is what T&D are most known for and what pretty much made them famous. Yes I love a lot of their other routines but I guess if you asked most ordinary people in the street to name a T&D routine it would probably be Bolero that would come out on top.

I suppose at least it is different in the sense that the celebs and pros do get involved in the choreo for it and its just the start and end that are meant to be the same so it does mean it isn't the exact same Bolero every time.

I was curious as to whether anyone else felt the same. I'm so glad i'm not the only one. I turned off last year when it went to a 2 hour format and they started having singers as judges and it became more about Jason's nasty remarks than actually about making constructive criticism. The whole programme has turned into one big joke. I think I stopped watching after week 2 last year and this year I haven't bothered with it at all.

I don't mind watching shows like this for an hour on a Sunday but I can't stand the thought of watching this long winded, drawn out piece of crap for over 2 hours. I don't even watch films that go on for that long. Then again I didn't watch much X Factor last year either and i've stopped watching Strictly after idiotic members of the public voted to save some talentless dullard over someone who actually deserved to win. These type of shows are just a joke and have become so boringly predictable now. It's always the same old desperate hasbeens doing the rounds going from one reality tv show to the next. If it's not one of the loose women or an ex factor reject it's some 20 year old soap actor, 80's Hollywood hasbeen or sports personality and then there's the token model that nobody's ever heard of and of course no reality tv show would be complete without the professional nutjobs, Katie Price or Kerry Katona. If I see that vile waste of space on tv one more time i'm gonna stick my foot through it.

What's wrong with going back to shows featuring members of the public and judges who actually judge and are not just there for entertainment. The entertainment is supposed to come from the contestants not the panel ffs! Oh and while i'm on that subject how about we have judges that actually know something about the thing they're supposed to be judging instead of the constant stream of camp bitchyness delivered by some vile drama queen who's only there to add controversy to the show and has no other positive feedback other than to make nasty remarks or some singer who's only there as the token bit of eye candy.

Have you actually watched it this year. They changed the panel, and there are two judges now that definitely know something about skating, and one judge, who knows about dancing and manages to convey his criticism without bitchiness.

Er no. The clue to that would be when I said I stopped watching it last year after show 2 and haven't seen this years at all.

Maybe the judging panel is better but I doubt it from what i've heard and it's still a long winded 2 hour show. Even if I record it and forward through most of it, it would still take me over an hour to watch it. Besides I really can't stand that irritating idiot, Louis Spence. Just the mere whiff of him makes me want to reach for my remote and it's not just his annoying voice I can't stand either.

then she should stay behind the scenes where 'most of here work is done.'

Why are you contributing to this forum then? No point IMO as you aren't up to date.

My respectful advice would be to watch it and then comment.

Good point. They don't have any of the other coaches sat with the contestants . But then the other's aren't sleeping with Christopher Dean!!!

I enjoy the show as a whole - it's ideal relaxing Sunday evening viewing. I like the new panel - although never a great fan of Louie Spence, I've always admired his dance ability, and he does know what he is talking about. Robin, of course, is always great but (dare ( say it?) just a little dull? Katarina is fabulous - not only knows skating inside out and upside down, but has a sense of humour with it.

I like the new twist for next Sunday; it sounds new and fresh, which imo is always good.

My only real quibble (apart from the tedious never ending adverts) is that I wish they would plan the VTs differently so that we could learn a bit more about the pro skaters in the same way as we have learnt about the pro dances in Strictly. Basically we know that Frankie is feisty & Dan is cute - but that's about it.