After moving from the mean streets of undercover, investigative reporting to the sequins and twirls of 'Dancing on Ice', Donal MacIntyre has some explaining to do...
He tells Linda McGee why he signed up the show (or was coerced into it!), why he loves Todd Carty's spirit and what he's really afraid of (no folks, he's not invincible!).
Linda McGee: Going back to the start, what made you want to sign up for a show like 'Dancing on Ice'?
Donal MacIntyre: Well in my house, my three girls - my two babies, six-year-old Allegra and 20-month-old baby Tiger, and my wife Aneera - run the household and they decided for me. I was volunteered. And people always throw a wry smile at that and think I'm pretending and I say: 'No'. I was knee-deep with the Haitian Voodoo Mafia in Miami, being presented with AK-47s and camouflage masks, when my wife phoned me and said: 'Do you know the BBC radio show which clashes with 'Dancing on Ice', which meant you couldn't do the show, well actually the BBC are rescheduling it so actually you're clear Donal. So I've signed you up. Do you want to talk about it?' and I said: 'I'm a bit busy now, honey. I've got three AK-47s in front of me. Maybe we'll discuss it later'. So I signed up and that's how it was.
LM: And no regrets about that decision so far? How are you finding the training for the show?
DM: Well, I'm loving the training. It's converting the training from the ice rink on to the ice show... and obviously the only way you progress is by falling about and taking risks and that is to my advantage. The pace can be quite ugly on the ice. It doesn't work in my favour but I'm doing my best. It's a great celebration of enthusiasm over talent and that's what I hope to do.
LM: When you initially signed up for the show you were still travelling around the world filming for your own shows. Was it just a case of trying to find a rink wherever you could to practice all those tricky moves?
DM: A little of that was practising my routines in my hotel room on terra ferma, in front of any English TV channel you could find, or CNN. And the second thing was finding ice rinks anywhere around the world, from Cape Town to Paris - there was none in Naples... Mexico city had the world's biggest ice rink. So yes, I spent 45 days abroad during the training period, which was tough, and contributed to a catastrophic, but much-needed, weight loss of three stone from the skating, the stress, the 50,000 air miles, and a small bout of food poisoning added about six pounds, so all in all it's been a wonderful journey and challenge and it's very funny to think that the last time I felt my heart beat so fast as after the skate-off was when I last had a gun held to my head by a crack addict... a loaded gun.
LM: That's a pretty massive comparison…
DM: Yeah, people think that's weird. It is weird but it's true. Maybe that says something about me but that's the truth. And you know... I'm afraid of the dark and I'm afraid of mice and I get nervous, almost terrified, but when the pressure was on I succeeded.
LM: I have to say I'm a bit surprised to hear you admitting to your fears. In your shows you do a pretty good job convincing us that you're almost invincible. So in real life you don't mind admitting to certain weaknesses, do you?
DM: Well part of the reason why I do the kind of stuff I do, and succeed in doing the gangster stuff I do, is because you pretend you're kind of invincible, in a very child-like superhero sense – you know, like nothing's ever gonna happen and you're going to save the world. And so there's a bit of kids' bravado about it. And that is a very secure place to be, because the more secure you feel in yourself with these gangsters the more they feed off that and the more secure you become. And the more nervous you are, the more nervous you become and people perceive you like that and that makes you a liability in a war zone or in a difficult environment. And it's not unlike the ice, where when you're nervous you lose the performance, you lose your capacity to perform. I'm delighted for Florentine, my partner, and my coaches who did their best to try to encourage me through but I'm gutted for Graeme.
LM: Yeah, talk to us about the first show - yourself and Graeme must have both been pretty shocked to be in the bottom two, considering some of the performances…
DM: Oh no, I knew. I think maybe Graeme was surprised to be in the bottom two but I knew. I knew about three months ago. Because it's a journey and it's a popularity contest and it's a skating contest, and that's why it's a great show. If it was a skating contest it would be the British Championships and we'd all go home but because it's kind of an all-sorts competition then we can take the best out of everybody. But I don't have a fanbase, like a soap fanbase. And neither does Graeme and he put in two great solid performances and I put in one kind of strong one at the end.
LM: You definitely looked more confident during the second performance - was it just that you thought: 'Right, it's all or nothing now' and lost the nerves as a result?
DM: Well I don't know whether I lost the nerves. I felt the nerves were much more acute the second time round and maybe that's the reason... My partner said: 'Snap out of it'. So I must have snapped out of it and just went for it. I don't want to be out of the competition. And you know it's not the end of the competition it's who you lose – your family. It's such an intimate and close family that you feel like you lose a job. And I'm quite sure there's a bereavement process too. Ray Quinn looked on and he was reliving every vote he went through on 'X Factor'. And we all had that empty feeling in the pits of our stomachs with nerves. But when I went to the stage, I thought that if I was going to go out I would have been happy. I put in a decent performance and I was proud of the performance so I thought: 'Right OK, if I go out with that performance, that's fine'. If I'd gone out with a performance that wasn't close to what I could achieve then I'd have been very disappointed.
LM: Donal, I have to ask you about the sneaky rumour that's going around, that at the start of the series you said you'd get a Torvill and Dean tattoo if you survived the first week of the show. Any truth in that?
DM: Do you know, I'm quoted as saying that and I may very well have said it but it's a moment of my occasional very minor minutes of insanity. But you know I might convert my Chelsea tattoo into a Blades of Glory tattoo, maybe with Will Ferrell. But I do think that Christopher Dean and Jayne Torvill are just fantastic. Chris Dean, my wife fancies him terribly. He's handsome.
LM: Absolutely, you'll get no arguments here! Has working with Torvill and Dean been something of an inspiration, considering they're such skating icons? It must be a bit of a thrill…
DM: It's amazing. I know top athletes and top performers in Olympic sport, and gold medallists, and high-grade performers have to have a steeliness and a desire and a selfishness about them to succeed and that often brings an irritability and a grumpiness and that's the price for achievement, because you have to exclude things to be the best, and you can't be nice to everybody because then you've to take time away from your performance or sport, and these guys have all the grace and humour of somebody who can always handle the world and yet a steeliness... but yet there's no sign of the hard side. There's no dark edge. You know they work really hard and they're such a pleasure to work with. And they're not just champions of choreography and art on ice, they are actually as revered as choreographers in their own right on stage and on ice and for theatre and for dance in general. They are utterly amazing athletes and amazing artists... I don't pretend it's a profound or inspirational journey for anybody other than the people in it, but the art they give is inspirational and it is an artform what they do. It is an athletic artform and I am dumbstruck in admiration and I am delighted that I engaged with this artform so I can really appreciate it because it has opened my eyes to dance and to art like that, and theatre, in a way that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.
LM: I have to ask you if you're worried at all about denting your credibility, because of the vast difference between what you ordinarily do every day for your work and the sequins, glitter and triples axels that go with 'Dancing on Ice'…
DM: Sure, yeah. Well, I feel it's a great addition and a great privilege and a great pleasure. And I think to advance one's appreciation of us, of other people's skills and artforms and choreography and dance with the best in the world, who are cultural, global icons, can only be a good thing. If other people have a different opinion so be it.
LM: Having survived the first week, which must be the most scary, are you beginning to feel more confident that there's a possibility that you could go all the way?
DM: There's a reality here and we all know it, I will not be going all the way. I will do my best and I'll be celebrating and I'll try to take lessons from Todd Carty to enjoy the process. He's loving it. Here's the thing with Todd... what people don't get about John Sergeant (of 'Strictly Come Dancing') is what this show and all the judges get with Todd, is that he's a celebration of the human spirit. He's a celebration of everything that's British and Irish. We enjoy the underdog and we enjoy the craic and the wink and we celebrate it because we see in Todd everything we see in ourselves. And I'm quite sure, Graeme is a case-in-point, that better skaters are kicked out as people like Todd are kept in but, do you know, there's not a shred of envy. If I go out because of Todd I'd be honoured because we recognise who he is, what he has done and what he represents. Nobody got that audience going or entertained them more than Todd Carty last week and the other thing is that the ice-dance is about entertainment. And if you entertain with humour and slapstick and some skating bravery, and he was brave, then fantastic. So I assure you, no matter how much work anyone else puts in, everybody will be privileged, except Jessica Taylor and Ray Quinn maybe, to go out to Todd.
