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

AN oven-ready Gemma Collins emerged from the gloom, on Sunday night, and, I swear, the same Titanic warning could be heard right across Britain.

“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.

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