Things don’t go so swell for Derry Girl Leah O’Rourke as she becomes the first celebrity to be eliminated from Dancing with the Stars 2023 (RTÉ One, Sunday, 6.30pm).
“I’m feeling okay. With my limited dancing abilities it was always a very real possibility,” the actor says after she is knocked out of the contest by public vote. “When I was offered this I was torn. I can’t dance ... I came in and gave it a shot.”
Alas, giving it a shot isn’t enough to impress viewers, who show O’Rourke and her pro partner, John Nolan, the exit over other stragglers, including the rugby star Shane Byrne and the soccer player Stephanie Roche.
O’Rourke has been full of pizazz across her three episodes. But, as she acknowledges, it’s been murder for her on the dance floor. This week she shakes maracas and grins and bears it as she and the enthusiastic Nolan deliver their best cha-cha to Bongo Cha Cha Cha by Goodboys.
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They try their hardest. Alas, with O’Rourke having bruised her ribs during rehearsals they’re up against it.
“Every family in Ireland would love to have you at the party – just not on the dance floor,” says the judge Brian Redmond, who doesn’t have it in him to dismantle her technique.
“If you’re having a good time I’m having a good time,” says a trying-to-be-kind Arthur Gourounlian.
Stephanie Roche, the struggling soccer star, surprises everyone – and not simply because she turns up wearing a velvet suit that looks like something from Charlie Chaplin’s Ziggy Stardust phase
Elsewhere it is a story of some front-runners rising to the occasion and others stumbling slightly. Brooke Scullion romps to first place once again – despite having to work with a new partner, Robert Rowinski, after the previous one, Maurizio Benenato, had to return to Italy to deal with a personal emergency.
She’s devastating uncorking a rumba to 2002 by Anne-Marie. “What a performance,” Redmond says. “Truly scintillating,” Loraine Barry agrees. The Eurovision singer vaults to pole position, with 26 points.
But as she soars another favourite, the social-media influencer Suzanne Jackson, becomes suddenly earthbound. She appears to blank out during a jive to Runaround Sue by Dion DiMucci. “It’s obvious what the pressure of elimination night does to people,” Redmond says. Jackson and partner, Michael Danilczuk, score 16.
Jackson crashes and burns slightly. But Roche, the struggling soccer star, surprises everyone – and not simply because she turns up wearing a velvet suit that looks like something from Charlie Chaplin’s Ziggy Stardust phase. She and Ervinas Merfeldas deliver a zinging charleston to Don’t Hustle Me by Pink and receive raves from the panel. “My goodness – look what you brought tonight,” Barry says.
The judges’ harshness towards Roche has been a subject of lively debate. Gourounlian says people have been pulling him aside all week to say he was unfair to her. But he feels the tough love has paid off. “I knew you had it in you,” he enthuses.
She receives 23 points, enough to put her firmly midtable and out of the danger of the relegation zone.
Roche’s success makes O’Rourke’s departure more or less inevitable. She takes it on the chin, acknowledging that, with her limited skills, the best she could do is to enjoy herself.
“There’s no room for hiding. It could be my last ever dance,” O’Rourke says. She’s right – and it is telling that she looks more relieved than devastated as she receives the heave-ho.
