He's said in the past that he finds the 'Mr Nasty' label given to him year after year during Dancing on Ice's run "lazy and really boring", but those are two adjectives probably better suited to describing his judging techniques. In attempting to deliver barbs to celebrity contestants on the show, he comes out with some of the most ridiculous and unhelpful 'advice' a member of the DOI panel could ever offer up.
Just last night (January 13, 2019), he told actor Richard Blackwood that he cannot be "forgettable at this stage of the competition". The feedback is irrelevant and incomplete. This was Richard's very first live skate on the show; so when exactly is the right stage to be "forgettable"? There isn't one! So he may as well have just sat in silence.
The week before (January 7, 2019), he told Grease star Didi Conn that she had been "dining out" on the song she skated to (We Go Together from Grease) for years, so she should have given her performance more energy in a bid to make it more exciting. He pretty much said that she owed it to the world to be better at ice skating because of Grease's success, using that success against the actress in the hopes of becoming his typical pantomime villain-self from an early stage.
When you have professional ice skating legends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean on the panel, sometimes giving scores almost double that of what Gardiner gives out, you wonder what his purpose being on the show is at all.
Is it simply to poke fun at the celebrities and bring about a bit of entertainment? If so, he's failing. The reaction to his commentary on social media shows that the majority of people find his feedback irritating rather than hilarious.
Maybe it's to encourage the celebs to do better? Again, if so, he's falling short. You can tell he's getting under the skin of some of them, but for all the wrong reasons. Brian McFadden is already speaking over him when it comes to feedback time, treating him as a joke rather than an actual helpful member of the panel.
Perhaps this should be Gardiner's final year as a part of the show. Yes, he gets the headlines and has us talking, but does DOI really need its legacy to be one surrounded by negativity and ignorance? We think producers would much rather the series be remembered for all of the right reasons.
Dancing on Ice continues Sundays at 6pm on ITV.
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Tagged in Dancing on Ice Jason Gardiner