After ten weeks of drama – both on and off the ice – we finally have a winner of Dancing on Ice. Despite being the favourite to win from the offset, Diversity star Perri Kiely lost out to actor and television presenter Joe Swash in Sunday night’s final.
Kiely and Swash were joined in the final by Paralympian Libby Clegg, whose incredible journey throughout the show – which included having to do a solo skate for 45 seconds despite being blind – will undoubtedly inspire others with disabilities to take up new sports like skating.
Each of the skaters first performed a routine choreographed by Torvill and Dean, before skating one of their favourite routines from earlier in the series. The leaderboard was neck-and-neck, as each skate received top marks of 40/40 from the judges. After Libby’s elimination, Joe and Alex and Perri and Vanessa then performed their interpretation of the iconic ‘Bolero’, and Christopher Dean remarked that Perri and Vanessa’s was the best they had ever seen on the show. As a result, it seemed that the trophy was already theirs, but voting figures have revealed that Joe won by a margin of around 2% of the vote. Viewers were wowed by Joe’s progress throughout the competition, as in Week 3 (the first time all skaters performed in the same show) he was at the bottom of the leaderboard, but he began steadily improving and increasing his scores each week before making it to the final.
Congratulations, Joe!
Watch one of Joe’s performances from the final below:
