Dancing On Ice Star 'H' asked BBC to do same-sex dancers but they said 'no...that's just not us'“I think people maybe expected us to come out flying rainbow flags and wearing hot pants,” he explains.
In an exclusive interview, he recalls: “I asked for a same-sex partner and they said, ‘No, the BBC doesn’t do that — it’s not us’.British pop group Steps, circa 1998; from left to right Lee Latchford-Evans, Lisa Scott-Lee, Ian H Watkins, Faye Tozer, Claire Richards“Then I wasn’t assertive enough, I wasn’t sure of myself, and I wanted to do the job so badly that I just went, ‘OK, I’ll carry on’.”
“Because if I snogged him or something happened it would completely devalue what I’m trying to achieve. What we are doing is bigger than us and bigger than the show. It’s a message.”After his ground-breaking performance, H reveals he received a curious message from a senior staffer at BBC rival Strictly Come Dancing which said: 'You should have waited for us'While he says there have been “a few bigots”, the response from the public has been on the whole overwhelmingly positive.
“As Matt said, this is normal. Someone said to me on social media, ‘Heterosexuality isn’t normal, it’s just more common’. And I love that quote — it’s brilliant.” It is a new era for Dancing On Ice, with controversial judge Jason Gardiner replaced by John Barrowman, who was choked up after H and Matt’s first skate.While there have been 'a few bigots', the response to the pairing from the public has been on the whole overwhelmingly positive“To have John there was very special,” H says. “It was his first time on the panel and this means so much to him, to have somebody represent him and his husband on the ice.
Listening to the minority and not the majority is wat is wrong with this world at the moment