Dancing with the Stars make-up artist Lisa O'Connor has laughed off Hughie Maughan's claim that she was behind his none-more-brown fake tan on Sunday's show, explaining that he used leg make-up on his face and was "that colour from eight o'clock on Sunday morning when I met him down having breakfast".
The Ballymun man was the (burnt) toast of the internet on Sunday, not just in Ireland but around the world, with his spray-on shenanigans which generated more excitement than the first full leaderboard on the show.
On Ryan Tubridy's RTÉ Radio 1 programme on Monday, Maughan had given his own Browning Version. He claimed that the sweaty exertions of rehearsal had left his existing tan looking a tad patchy and an emergency repair job was required. He said the tanning product chosen was designed with a much darker skin tone in mind.
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"There was nothing I could do," he explained. "I had to go out looking as I did as they didn't have any other colour left... It was a tan they used on Jamelia when she was doing The Voice two years ago."
However, in a phone-in with the Eoghan McDermott Show on 2fm on Tuesday, O'Connor sought to put the 'Tangogate' record straight, admitting that she had been, ahem, browned off with Hughie's interview.
"No, I did not do that to him!" she laughed. "I tried to make him go out looking tanned - there is no problem being tanned within an acceptable range - but that was hilarious.
"He was that colour from eight o'clock on Sunday morning when I met him down having breakfast and he was the same colour as the jacket he wore! I couldn't even explain what colour he was!"
O'Connor told McDermott that the backstage team had actually tried to take the tan off because Maughan "started getting a reaction to it" and that the dancefloor hopeful refuses to avail of the professional spray tan service on offer like the rest of the contestants. Maughan, she said, had done his own tan "but only from the chin up".
"Not even on his hands!" she laughed. "The only reason he lets us put something on his hands to blend his hands was [because] he slept on his hands and he had the 'Shroud of Turin of Hughie' on his hands!
"It was only then when it actually went out and we were all laughing at him... But when you see someone like Katherine Lynch [on Sunday's show] and she had a very emotional story about her best friend who was buried on Friday and then you just see Hughie in the background... It was like, 'This is a comedy of errors'. It really was.
O'Connor also revealed that Jamelia had actually done her own make-up while working as a coach on The Voice of Ireland.
"She used to come to me with her face done and I used to do her eye make-up and her lashes and the whole lot," O'Connor recounted.
"She showed me one day what she does and she's brilliant at doing her own make-up, but it was actually Naomi Campbell's own make-up artist that taught her how to do it. I never did her face!"
When asked by McDermott why Maughan had put the blame on her, O'Connor replied: "Ah listen, c'mere, I'm his fall guy! I don't know! To be honest with you I was very angry yesterday; I was very, very upset. I think he'd probably woken up and he just went, 'Oh God. Oh, they put it on!'
"I've actually photographic evidence of him for nineteen minutes-past-six - the background team are in there and they were actually filming him, the whole lot - and he was painting more on!
What he was painting on his face was Sally Hansen leg make-up, in the darkest colour!"
Looking forward to this weekend's reunion with Maughan, O'Connor said she would "hug him and stab him in the back".
"No, I'm going to hug him," she continued. "Because today was kind of my getting my story across and I'm kind of aware that he's only 22. And God love him, he has a heart of gold.
"There's not a bad bone in his body; he's great craic backstage.
"I had to actually kind of retaliate with this because I am knocking around a long time and you're only as good as your last job. Hughie was not my last job: Katherine Lynch was."
"At the end of the day," O'Connor concluded, there's more things going on in the world. It's a show about dancing and it shouldn't be about fake tan! On with the show!"
Fans can find out if Maughan has toned things down on Sunday on RTÉ One at 6.30pm.
