Jason Gardiner has hit back at Gemma Collins in the aftermath of Dancing On Ice’s first live show.
Dancing On Ice kicked off on ITV on Sunday night with the first six couples taking to the ice for the first time.
At the end of each routine the judges – Jayne Torvill, Christopher Dean, Jason Gardiner and Ashley Banjo – gave their marks and comments before viewers could vote for their favourite.
Gemma’s performance to Crazy In Love by Beyoncé & Jayz-Z scored a total of 16 points but Jason awarded just 2.5 marks.
He told her afterwards: “You talk a big talk but you don’t back it up. It reminded me of a French and Saunders parody. This was uncomfortable to watch. You haven’t got any technique.”
But the comments didn’t seem to get to Gemma, who took aim at Jason’s own skating skills.
She said in an interview on Lorraine: “I find him highly amusing. I really like him, yes he’s definitely going to say stuff about me and Jason Gardiner can’t actually skate. Jason can have all the chat, but he can’t back it up with the actions.”
Appearing on ITV’s This Morning today (Friday), Jason had his say.
“We have to forgive these people for being ignorant and not knowing there stuff. She doesn’t understand where I come from,” he said. “I can actually skate. If she wants to speak to Jayne and Chris. I’ve never professed to be a professional skater.
“I’m not on the panel to judge skating, we leave that to skating royalty Jayne and Chris. Ashley and I have defined roles to talk about choreography.”
Jason went on to defend some of his harsh comments to the celebs.
“I look at it this way. Normally everyone likes to settle into the competition. They are competitions from episode one,” he explained. “What it isn’t for me is ‘let’s see a lovely demonstration for the first two week and we start in week three’. I wanted to kickstart it from week one.”
Dancing On Ice 2019 airs at 6PM on ITV on Sunday nights, hosted by Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield.
