Dancing On Ice is NOT fixed – my ability makes the show better, says confident Brendan Cole

ONE is a ballroom champ who seemed destined to win Dancing On Ice, the other a novice who shook more than his trademark maracas.

But former Strictly professional Brendan Cole, who has made it to this weekend’s final of the ITV contest, reckons hapless Bez was one of his greatest rivals.

He knew the Happy Mondays legend would win the public vote — and insists he was not as bad as his performances on the night suggested.

Brendan, 45, said: “At first you’re going, ‘Yeah, OK Bez’, but on the practice rink he was actually doing some incredible stuff.

“You go, ‘Bloody hell, Bez!’ but then quite often in the live show it didn’t quite go to plan for him.

“He was actually quite good at certain things at certain times.”

Fellow showbiz pros Regan Gascoigne and Kimberly Wyatt, who make up the final three, also admit they felt threatened by 57-year-old Bez.

He remained in the competition long after steadier skaters such as Ben Fogle and Rachel Stevens departed, and while he wasn’t too hot on the ice, viewers loved his madcap routines.

At the same time Brendan, Regan and Kimberly dominated the scoreboard, leading to claims that the show was “fixed” for the three expert dancers to win.

But Brendan reckons Dancing On Ice would suffer without competitors with the full range of abilities.

He said: “I think the fact we have a dance background has only improved things on the ice. The stuff we’ve been able to do because of that background has been special.

“People are always going to complain, we’ll never change their minds. All we can do is our best on the ice.

“There’s something cool about the fact we’re all here, we’ve all got dance backgrounds so we’ve got that performance element. You’re not worried about somebody not performing — you know all of us will be on it.”

During his 15 years on Strictly, Brendan became known as the show’s bad boy, often arguing with judges about their verdicts on his dancing.

He was fiercely competitive, hard on his dance partners and was at the centre of one of the earliest cases of the Strictly curse when he split from fiancée Camilla Dallerup while partnered with BBC newsreader Natasha Kaplinski in 2004.

But the New Zealand-born dancer — now married to model Zoe Hobbs and dad to their two children — said that hard image was just a “narrative” peddled by the show.

He added: “I’m not actually fiercely competitive. I’m competitive with myself — if I do something that’s not where I can be, then I’m immensely peed off with myself.

“If I win or lose it doesn’t matter, but it’s nice to win — don’t get me wrong. I came on this show hoping to prove to people that Strictly only showed one side of me. They pushed that narrative for 15 series and it was tiring — that’s actually not me.

“I muck around a lot, and that wasn’t shown. But it is being shown on Dancing On Ice.” That doesn’t mean that Brendan hasn’t gone all out to win. He and his pro partner Vanessa Bauer — and while she recovered from Covid, Brendyn Hatfield — have pushed the limits to show viewers what he can do.

I’m not actually fiercely competitive. I’m competitive with myself — if I do something that’s not where I can be, then I’m immensely peed off with myself.

And Brendan has now revealed the secret injury that almost drove him out of the contest. He said: “I had a moment two weeks ago when I didn’t think I was going to be on the show.

“I had fallen on my hip quite badly when I was holding Vanessa in a lift, and she landed on top of me.

“And then the Saturday of quarter- finals, my hip went out, my muscles stopped working and I couldn’t stand on my leg. It kept on giving way.

“Even 15 minutes before the show I ran to the physio. I was worried I’d have to pull out.” In Sunday night’s glittering finale, the trio will perform four routines, including a show dance and their own take on Torvill and Dean’s stunning Bolero, which won them Olympic gold in 1984.

Due to a scheduling shake-up for the FA Cup quarter-finals last weekend, the dancers have now had two weeks to prepare for the event.

‘Small meltdown’

Brendan said: “It was nice to have the weekend, a bit of family time. But when you enter into something like this we’ve all said, ‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’.

“The whole journey — six months of ridiculous dedication and sacrifice away from our families — all coming to that moment.

“My mind is focused on an incredible last show, perfecting what I’ve spent six months trying to perfect.”  It all sounds rather like the hard-nut Brendan we know from Strictly.

So has he really changed — and has lockdown played a part?

He said: “I’m not saying I don’t want to win, but it’s not at the forefront of my mind.

“The year and a half of no performing, being forced out of your job — for me personally I didn’t realise how hard that was going to be.

“Six months in, I was at a low point, going, ‘I’m not fulfilling my dream, what I love to do, I’m just taking my kids to school every day’.

“Then to have an opportunity like this, a big show with incredibly talented people . . . ”

The cheeky Brendan of old soon rears his head as he jokes about trying to sabotage his TV rival Regan — and it’s clear that the final three have become a very close unit. He added: “My weakness is my love for my competitors, how well I want them to do!

“Regan’s weakness is he’s very particular with how he puts down his blade guards, and I’m not really bothered.

“So I throw mine in front of him and it makes him have a small meltdown.”

•  The Dancing On Ice live final is on ITV at 7pm on Sunday. Additional reporting: Amanda Devlin