Dancing On Ice will only be a hit if Gemma Collins ends up in A&E

“Fatberg. Right ahead.”

Then we all sat and waited for the impact that would surely follow.

And waited . . . and waited, as Gemma remained stubbornly upright for the duration.

Such is life at Dancing On Ice, “the show where anything could happen”, according to the continuity announcer, but never actually does.

That’s the main reason why people stopped watching and ITV buried it in a cold and shallow grave five years ago.

Then, without much warning or any great demand, it was suddenly brought back to life, last year, and proved every bit as underwhelming and injury free as I remembered.

There’s no horse too dead for another ITV flogging, though, so it’s just returned for yet another run, with most of the same fixtures and fittings.

Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby do a solid enough job of hosting, considering their script could suck a black hole inside out, and there’s a four- man Ice Panel where the truth bombs are exclusively supplied by Jason Gardiner, who arrived dressed as Bret Maverick for Sunday’s opening show.

What seems to separate this year’s Dancing On Ice from almost every other series, however, is the line-up. It’s actually quite imaginative and offers the show a serious chance of redemption, if just one of them can be hospitalised before the end of the run.

Among the 12 contenders, we’ve got: Westlife’s Brian McFadden, Richard “Hollywood is the catalyst for everything I do” Blackwood, cricketer Ryan Sidebottom, and Saira Khan, who was advised by Ruth Langsford to “do Strictly”, but is a bit too low rent for the BBC so is stuck here wearing skates and tights.

Despite having two hours to fill, none of that lot actually got to dance on Sun- day, though, as, I suspect, ITV wanted to clear the decks for its preferred bookings.

These include 67-year-old Didi Conn (plus carer), from Grease, Corrie’s Jane Danson, who was put in “a horse lift, with half rotation”, and Mark “Joe Mangel” Little, who’s turned into Dog The Bounty Hunter since we last saw him on Neighbours.

But let’s not kid ourselves here. The reason many of us probably tuned in, on Sunday, in was to see Gemma Collins.

Towie’s self-styled “GC” the first letter of which stands for Gigantic. A woman who really could do with a heavy landing on that over-entitled a**e of hers or, better still, developing a work ethic and some humility.

I prayed for the worst then, and saved what was left for her partner, Matt Evers, but he’d clearly taken one look at Gemma and thought “screw that for life without a disability allowance”.

There were no lifts, no falls and she didn’t even have the decency to rip her drawers when she tried the splits. Sunday was just another entry in DOI’s endless list of crushing disappointments.

Partly thanks to some very sympathetic marking, from everyone except Jason, Gemma will also get to skate again in a fortnight, which, I think I’m right in saying, means they’ll have to make an attempt at the infamous “King Kong lift”.

And then, once Addison Lee has dropped her off at the rink, it’s on with the skating.

INCIDENTALLY, complete the following sentence from Monday’s Good Morning Britain.

Piers Morgan: “I bumped into Gemma Collins in Langan’s restaurant, at Christmas, and . . . ”

A) “She’s OK, actually.”

B) “A Japanese sports network bought the footage for 50million yen.”

BBC Bros doc a genuine scream

THE expression TV gold doesn’t begin to do justice to BBC4’s fly-on-the-wall documentary about Matt and Luke Goss’s O2 reunion gig.

It’s a genuine masterpiece that would deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Spinal Tap, if the pair of them weren’t so wonderfully serious about everything.

Bros: After The Screaming Stops is the title of the film, directed by David Soutar and Joe Pearlman, who had the good sense just to point their cameras at the boys and let them say things like: “I made a conscious decision, because of Stevie Wonder, not to be superstitious.” (Matt)

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, f*** me that’s true, but we don’t have the time Rome did.” (Luke)

“He was a rectangle, I was a rectangle and together we made a square, which is a fortress.” (Matt)

And “There were 15 one-way streets and one solitary two-way street, where me and my brother met in the middle.” (Matt again, making them sound more like the Ashford ring road rather than pop sensations).

As well as all the tortured metaphors and Matt’s profundities, though, the film also features a fantastically earnest rant about conkers and an escalating feud between the boys, which should have had every single viewer crying out for both of them to be included in the next I’m A Celebrity line-up, pretty much from the word go.

But how did I feel at the end of this emotional dual carriageway?

In the words of poet/philosopher/singer Matt Goss: “Two words. Privileged.”

(Note: Bros: After The Screaming Stops is available on the BBC iPlayer and I no longer wish to speak to anyone who hasn’t watched it at least once.)

Quiz show doughballs of the month

Celebrity Mastermind, John Humphrys: “The single horn of what large African mammal is formed mainly from keratin, the same material as hair and nails.”
Shaun Ryder: “Woolly mammoth.”

John Humphrys: “At least 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament are usually attributed to which author?”
Candice Brown: “John Constable.”

The Time It Takes, Joe Lycett: “New Year’s Day in the UK, January or December?”

Lauren: “December.”

And Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “In 2017, Mark Calaway, who’s better known as The Undertaker, retired from which sport?”

Gerry: “Golf.”

Random TV irritations

The Voice UK fooling me into thinking it might go a whole episode without Jennifer Hudson “spontaneously” bursting into song.

Luther turning out to be a soulless, unpleasant, far-fetched mess. The insane pouting contortions of Candice “Bake Off” Brown during Celebrity Mastermind.

The BBC somehow crowbarring an anti-Brexit dig into The Greatest Dancer.

And Dee Dee Wilde calling her old Tena Lady troop, on the same show, Pan’s Fans, rather than the far more appropriate and eye-catching Pads People. Basic stuff, really.

Great Sporting Insights

Romain Saiss: “Every Boxing Day is going to be like December 26th.”

Steve Howey: “You need to have experienced that experience to have the experience.”

And Phil Thompson: “All these City players are like for like. Even Danilo, who isn’t as good as Kyle Walker.”

JUST when they thought we couldn’t send them anything worse than the potato famine, up pipes Last Leg Of The Year guest Sue Perkins with this Brexit bonus: “My New Year’s resolution is to try and track down a dim and distant Irish relative, so I can finally get that passport.”

And if there are any genealogists who can help, send the information to me marked “Generation Game: Urgent.”

Knighthood’s in the post.

TV GOLD

Bros: After The Screaming Stops.

Paul Ryan’s Farage cameo on Brexit: The Uncivil War.

Clarkson not trying to be likeable, on Millionaire, which, ironically, made him very likeable.

Bradley Walsh hating every second of his skydive on ITV’s Breaking Dad.

Simplicity Cremations’ perfectly-placed advert during The Last Leg Of The Year (“Making funerals less of an undertaking”).

And Billy Connolly, overwhelmed by love, on BBC2, paying tribute to: “All the things that made me good and bad, Scotland.”

Deaf subtitles of the week

Match Of The Day’s Jonathan Pearce on Alvaro Morata: “He needs to do that game in, game out to prove he’s good enough for Chelsea.”

“They need to do that gay men, gay marriage to prove he’s good enough for Chelsea.”

Very specific TV irritations

Celebrity Mastermind failing to ask Strictly extra Neil Jones: “Sean(n) Walsh made a successful what at your wife?”
Pass.

Lookalikes

Sent in by Iain Milne, Newcastle. Picture research: Amy Reading.

So lets see, is C4 leave or remain?

TV dramatists haven’t yet rewritten the result of Brexit.

But, trust me, they will eventually. This is just the start of the softening-up process.

Brexit: The Uncivil War, a Channel 4 production that toyed with neutrality, for about 20 minutes, but had given up any pretence long before the drama’s rather desperate postscript finally stopped trying to nudge viewers in the Remainer direction.

The two main characters weren’t entirely subtle either.

One, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, was Dominic Cummings, the hi-vis dork who was in charge of the Leave campaign.

The other, “I’M IN” leader Craig Oliver, whose portrayal, by Rory Kinnear, as a brilliant-but-tragic hero, was rather undermined by the fact Craig Oliver was also one of the drama’s political advisers.

What saved The Uncivil War, though, was the acting, particularly Paul Ryan’s Nigel Farage turn, and Cumberbatch, who wasn’t a perfect fit for Cummings as his Durham accent slipped too often.

It’s a performance brimming with such mesmerising charisma, though, I can genuinely see The Uncivil War effecting genuine change – two extra zeroes on Dominic Cummings’ next salary.

Such is the real power of TV drama.

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