It might only be a three days into October, but Dancing On Ice has begun to announce its 2023 stars - the first of whom being EastEnders star Patsy Palmer!
Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield announced the news on This Morning today after teasing the star's identity throughout the show.
"I can't believe I'm the first one," the former EastEnders star told the presenters as she appeared via live link on ITV.
"No backing out now, we’ve revealed you." Holly joked as Patsy beamed on screen from Los Angeles, where she now lives.
Quizzed on why she wanted to take part, Patsy said: “Well I didn’t obviously call them up and say ‘can I take part?’. Just out of all the things that came through at that time, this was the one that I had to really think about.
“Obviously I wanted to challenge myself, get back to work, get out of my comfort zone.
“I just thought, I’ll just go for it. It seems a lot of fun, I do like ice skating but I'm not an ice skater or figure skater."
Phillip then dropped a bombshell and revealed that Patsy has been asked to do the show before but turned the opportunity down.
"Yes I know," Patsy explained, "because I've been absolutely terrified before but I feel like my pact that I made with myself when I was 50, which I was this year, was that I had to do things to challenge myself for the next couple of years and get out of my comfort zone because I don't want to get stuck in this thing of like 'Ah! I'm 50!'"
"It's such a weird age so I'm kind of doing it for all the 50-year-olds out there who think they can't challenge themselves. Feel free to watch me and follow me doing whatever I need to do."
Holly then asked the soap star if keeping the news a secret has been difficult as there would be people watching that know her personally who wouldn't have known until now.
Patsy laughed and explained: "My daughter, she's been travelling, so she'll be like 'what is going on?' So yeah I'm excited about that for when she comes back.
Phillip asked how much experience of skating Patsy has had as she used to skate when she was little.
"The experience is that I used to get on the bus with my mates and go up to [...] Lee Valley Ice Rink and it was just something we used to do as kids. It would have been one of the first things that we were allowed to do without our parents was go ice skating.
"So I did used to go, skate around fast and crash into the wall as that was the only way I could stop."
Phillip asked the actress how she felt about being judged and if she's competitive with herself.
"I'm not competitive," Patsy said, "But this time I'm going to say lets try and win it, it's a competition. But I don't know how you would do that.
"I'm just going to focus really hard on the training, really really use what I've been doing with meditation for quite a long time and just see if that does have the benefits that I hope it does. This will really put it all to the test for me because this is a real challenge for me."
Earlier this year, it was reported that former Love Island star Laura Anderson, who shot to fame on the 2018 series of the ITV2 dating show, was 'keen' to nab a spot on this year's line-up.
She is reportedly 'lined up' for next series of Dancing on Ice after she had 'secret meetings' with ITV bosses.
The Scottish bombshell, 33, previously auditioned for Dancing On Ice following her Love Island stint, but lost out on bagging a place to her ex-boyfriend, Wes Nelson, who went on to show off his incredible skating skills on the 2019 series of the ITV competition.
And, three years later, Laura was reportedly 'gearing up' to show off her talents.
