Wild Youth band member and Dancing With The Stars’ contestant David Whelan has paid tribute to his dad ahead of the show’s dedicated dance week, saying that, "I owe him my career."
Each of the contestants this week will dedicate their performance to someone special in their lives. Whelan will dance a rumba to Sting's Fields of Gold, and chose to do so in tribute to his father Jim.
"I wasn't an easy child or teenager growing up, hence the name Wild Youth was created," he says. "I was a bit of a headcase sometimes and I could have been hard to control. I rebelled a lot.
"So in turn, me and him had ups and downs in our relationship for a long time, because I was just an immature little ‘you know what’," he reflects.
"Eventually I grew up and I had a conscience, so I was like, ‘What are you doing"?!'"
"So I feel like this is kind of like a thank you and almost like a sorry for all that stuff."
Jim, who works as a hairdresser, is a trained ballroom dancer himself and even teaches dance. His son, who says that he had no experience of ballroom dance prior to the show, credits him with encouraging him to follow his own career ambitions.
"He was the one person who let me chase my dreams constantly the whole time, even though I might have caused trouble in the past. He constantly was like, ‘You have something - go for it, go for it, go for it," he says.
"He let me... follow my dreams because he never really got to. All his life, he's been a worker. He's the hardest working man ever in my life. I think he only missed two days of work in all of his entire life of working."
On his dad’s dancing background, he said, "He did little community competitions as a kid, stuff like that. And then I came along and ruined his life and he had to kind of stop doing it," he laughs.
Whelan Senior returned to dance "later in life": "It was something that he did on a Monday and Wednesday, and we never spoke about it - it was his thing, I knew nothing about ballroom.
"And now I'm doing it and I have an insight into his life, into his passion... it's after making us now probably closer than ever, ‘cause now we talk about it.
"I have so much respect for him now because it's tough. This isn't easy. My body’s in bits, my brain’s in bits," he says.
Luckily for Whelan, his father doesn’t critique his dancing technique too much. "No, not at all. I told him at the very beginning, 'I can't do this if I have two teachers... Salome's already hard enough as it is on me!'"
Instead, Whelan says that his father is "living vicariously through me, that’s a fact!" watching his son dance in front of the nation every week.
Will there be tears from the Whelan men on Sunday? "Yeah, possibly. There's already been nearly tears talking about it."
Reflecting on last week’s dance, where Whelan ended up lower in the leaderboard than usual (in fourth, after scoring a very respectable 24 points), he says he was expecting some criticism from the judges as he knew he had made some technical errors in his cha cha.
"Brian made a good point that I have been riding the high for so long and I think I'm just one of those people, I can't always be good.
"And also the cha cha is really hard - it's very technical... [my] technique probably wasn't perfect.
"These things happen. I'm still in the competition - thank God," saying that he was "very scared" when he was among the last three standing in the elimination.
"In my head, I was like, 'I'm gone'. I really thought 'I'm gone'."
Whelan remains ambivalent on if there was an element of the judges perhaps trying to take him down a peg or two, after a lightening start in the competition, and having been the bookies’ early favourite.
"Maybe - I don't know. I'm not cocky in any way, shape or form about this, so I hope they’re not!
"I honestly don't know. I did make mistakes... I know I did."
Of course with Eurovision fever heating up, and Whelan’s band Wild Youth having represented Ireland at last year’s competition, he was quizzed over this year’s entrant Bambie Thug and their chance of progressing through to the grand finale.
"I think they could be what Ireland needs," he says. "They’re unique. They’re different. They’re not afraid to push boundaries.
"I found when we did it, people kept calling our stuff safe - I don't think it was safe, I would say that that was a nice song - but people were saying it was safe.
"So maybe what [Ireland’s entry] needs is something out there, a bit more edgy, not afraid to change it up a bit," he says.
"I think their song... could possibly get us into the final and I wish them all the luck."
When asked what advice he’d offer Bambie, he said. "I would say don't listen to outside comments... don't latch onto this pressure of Ireland hasn't made it to the final in so long... be authentic. Don't try to change yourself."
He also advised them to look after themselves, as performers can end up tired on the big night. "You don't get a second. We were there for two-and-a-half weeks and I think we had one day off, and that wasn't really a day off either, 'cause you might be going to do media and all that stuff. It's constant.
"I found by the time... it came to the actual performance itself, I can understand why some performers were tired or a bit shot, a bit beat, a bit wrecked, because it's non-stop. So you have to be strong mentally."
Confirming that Wild Youth are on hiatus while he’s taking part in Dancing with the Stars, he says, "We’re taking a breath – well I’m not! But everyone else is doing little things that they love to do.
"Some are producing; some are managing... they're not like just sitting at home waiting for me to come back!
"Everyone's just taking a little time to just do their thing and to chill and to refresh in whatever that means to them," he says.
Dancing With The Stars, Sundays, 6.30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.
