There’s an unhappy punchline for the internet comedian Michael Fry as he becomes the first contestant to be eliminated from Dancing with the Stars 2026 (RTÉ One, Sunday, 6.30pm).
Fry and his pro partner, Kylee Vincent, have hovered around the middle of the leader board during their two weeks on the show, but, perhaps lacking name recognition among a Sunday-night RTÉ audience, he has now been voted off and will miss the upcoming movie week.
“I had the best time. I was really scared. But I wanted to do it and I did it scared,” says Fry, whose youthful features and stiff dance style give him the aura of a 12-year-old celebrating his Confirmation by hitting the nightclub.
Fry does his best negotiating a potentially tricky samba. It’s a risky performance – at one point, for reasons known only to him, the comedian starts manically waving a tea-towel-like cloth at the camera.
Comedian and actor Michael Fry and pro dancer Kylee Vincent (right) were the first couple to be voted out , during the live show of RTE’s Dancing With The Stars.
Pic: Kyran O’Brien /kobpix
He does, however, earn the praise of the judges, plus a respectable score of 23.
“You’re fresh, you’re creative, you always look forward. Well done,” says the new head judge, Oti Mabuse.
Sadly, Fry can now only look backwards as he becomes the first celeb to depart the contest. Elsewhere, the gap between the front-runners and the stragglers continues to widen.
Topping the leader board at the end of an engaging and ultimately very tense episode is the singer Tolü Makay, dancing with Maciej Zieba. Their American smooth to Olivia Dean’s Man I Need scores 32 – including the season’s first nine, from Arthur Gourounlian.
Singer Tolü Makay and Maciej Zieba. Photograph: Kyran O’Brien/kobpix
“This makes me happy,” Mabuse says. “Like warm soup on a cold Irish night.” Gourounlian agrees: “You owned it … I can’t even talk … Wow.”
Right behind her are the Olympic rower Philip Doyle and his partner, Daniela Roze, whose salsa to Pitbull features a lorryload of lifts – not great for Roze’s fear of heights – and Doyle romping around with his shirt undone. The judges swoon, and a score of 31 places him joint third across the opening fortnight.
Down in the basement, it looks as if it’s going to be a battle of the grannies’ favourites, in the form of the singer Brian Kennedy and the Traitors star Paudie Moloney.
Kennedy dyes his hair cobalt for his cha-cha to Benson Boone, but he’s the one feeling blue as Brian Redmond rewards him with an abject two points. “I’m glad you had a lie down at the end,” Redmond says, referring to Kennedy’s show-stopping conclusion to his routine with James Cutler.
Traitors star Paudie Moloney and pro Laura Nolan perform during Sunday night’s show. Photograph: Kyran O’Brien/kobpix
Criticised about his posture on opening evening, Moloney corrects course as he and Laura Nolan do a slow waltz to the theme from The Godfather. He is rewarded with a thumbs-up from the panel, though he is still in joint last place with Kennedy over the two episodes.
His isn’t the only waltz of the night. The Apprentice contestant Jordan Dorgan also dances one – though he is thrown when he mishears “Viennese waltz” as “Vietnamese waltz”. He also suffers from dizziness during rehearsals, though on the night he and Rebecca Scott perform adequately, with a score of 25.
Who will be left dizzy as the contestants get up and running in earnest? Not Mabuse, who has already made the role of head judge her own. She has said that she jumped for joy when she bagged the Dancing with the Stars Ireland job – and her excitement is infectious.
This week she and Redmond even start to agree about their scores. With movie week on the way, might it be the beginning of a beautiful friendship?