John Barrowman has urged 'Dancing On Ice' viewers to "get out and vote" after backlash over Lady Leshurr finding herself in the skate off.
John Barrowman
Despite the rapper being one of four joint top scorers for the ITV competition's launch, she could be eliminated on Sunday (24.01.21) after failing to pick up public votes.
Now, John has told the Daily Mirror newspaper: "When the show is on, I go on Twitter. There was a lot of chit-chat.
“What I say to those commenting on Twitter, is you have to vote, because that will save the skater you’re commenting on.
"Vote, vote, vote, vote. I was in the same situation long ago and I was voted off because people didn’t vote for me.”
The 53-year-old star appears on the panel with Christopher Dean, Jayne Torvill and Ashley Banjo, and the latter admitted seeing Leshurr in the bottom two was a real surprise.
He added: "It was a big shock she was in the bottom two, because I thought [her performance] was original and different. Her energy is literally like top tier."
However, he also tried to clarify the judges' scores, and how the marks come from a combination of technical skill, creativity and "really original moves", rather than the exact same criteria across the board.
He said: “The same mark doesn’t mean the same skate. Somebody could be a worse skater but just have great creative and really original moves, that I then vote higher for.
"So, the fact that it ended all on a similar score, with the same score for a lot of the skaters, actually is chance, because we don’t confer.”
Last weekend, four couples - Jason Donovan and Alexandra Shauman, Joe-Warren Plant and Vanessa Baeur, Lady Leshurr and Brendyn Hatfield, and Rebekah Vardy and Andy Buchanan - were joint top of the leaderboard with 25 out of 40 points whilst Rufus and Robin scored 23.5 points.
Denise Van Outen, who danced with a dislocated shoulder, and Matt Evers were bottom of the leaderboard with 19.5 points.
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