Sunday 10 February 2008

'Dancing On Ice goes grunge!'

My friend Alannah refuses to watch Dancing On Ice. She is an extremely big fan of Torvill & Dean and thinks it is beneath them. I basically agree. It's very much the winter Olympics to Strictly Come Dancing's days in the sun. It's more dangerous, more spectacular, but somehow everyone finds it that bit harder to care.

But one of the best things about it (or the worst, depending on your cringe threshold) is witnessing journeyman sports commentator Tony Gubba finding himself completely out of his depth in the arenas of dance, costume and modern music. If you've ever watched an Olympic opening ceremony, and I have watched a few, this is not a new phenomenon. But in that situation, those drowning in ill-judged metaphor and hopeful guesswork are often afforded the privacy of some kind of graveyard time slot, broadcasting as they are from Sydney, Seoul, Atlanta, etc. How mean of ITV to shunt them into primetime. 

Tonight, Chris Fountain, age-inappropriate crush object and clear DOI favourite, performed to Timberlake's Cry Me A River. The Fountain clearly spent quite a bit of his early youth breakdancing in shopping centres, and T&D were happy to exploit this. God bless Tony, then, for exclaiming at the end, 'Dancing On Ice goes grunge!' and then venturing something about raves. 

I am watching the BAFTAs. I now love Javier Bardem. And, while I don't agree with the whole principle of wishing you looked like someone else, I reckon it can't be bad to wear the face and body of Rosamund Pike. Also, Tilda Swinton may be one of the few women in the world who is paler than me.

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