{"id":280138,"date":"2026-01-12T01:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T01:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/280138\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T01:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T01:21:15","slug":"dancing-with-the-stars-sees-its-first-elimination-as-contenders-emerge-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/280138\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing with the Stars sees its first elimination, as contenders emerge \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an unhappy punchline for the internet comedian Michael Fry as he becomes the first contestant to be eliminated from Dancing with the Stars<\/b><\/a> 2026 <\/b>(RT\u00c9<\/a> One, Sunday, 6.30pm). <\/p>\n

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 RT\u00c9 audience, he has now been voted off and will miss the upcoming movie week. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had the best time. I was really scared. But I wanted to do it and I did it scared,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Fry does his best negotiating a potentially tricky samba. It\u2019s a risky performance \u2013 at one point, for reasons known only to him, the comedian starts manically waving a tea-towel-like cloth at the camera.<\/p>\n

\"ComedianComedian and actor Michael Fry and pro dancer Kylee Vincent (right) were the first couple to be voted out , during the live show of RTE\u2019s Dancing With The Stars.<\/p>\n

Pic: Kyran O\u2019Brien \/kobpix<\/p>\n

He does, however, earn the praise of the judges, plus a respectable score of 23. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re fresh, you\u2019re creative, you always look forward. Well done,\u201d says the new head judge, Oti Mabuse.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Topping the leader board at the end of an engaging and ultimately very tense episode is the singer Tol\u00fc Makay, dancing with Maciej Zieba. Their American smooth to Olivia Dean\u2019s Man I Need scores 32 \u2013 including the season\u2019s first nine, from Arthur Gourounlian.<\/p>\n

\"SingerSinger Tol\u00fc Makay and Maciej Zieba. Photograph: Kyran O\u2019Brien\/kobpix <\/p>\n

\u201cThis makes me happy,\u201d Mabuse says. \u201cLike warm soup on a cold Irish night.\u201d Gourounlian agrees: \u201cYou owned it … I can\u2019t even talk … Wow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right behind her are the Olympic rower Philip Doyle and his partner, Daniela Roze, whose salsa to Pitbull features a lorryload of lifts \u2013 not great for Roze\u2019s fear of heights \u2013 and Doyle romping around with his shirt undone. The judges swoon, and a score of 31 places him joint third across the opening fortnight.<\/p>\n

Down in the basement, it looks as if it\u2019s going to be a battle of the grannies\u2019 favourites, in the form of the singer Brian Kennedy and the Traitors star Paudie Moloney. <\/p>\n

Kennedy dyes his hair cobalt for his cha-cha to Benson Boone, but he\u2019s the one feeling blue as Brian Redmond rewards him with an abject two points. \u201cI\u2019m glad you had a lie down at the end,\u201d Redmond says, referring to Kennedy\u2019s show-stopping conclusion to his routine with James Cutler.<\/p>\n

\"TraitorsTraitors star Paudie Moloney and pro Laura Nolan perform during Sunday night’s show. Photograph: Kyran O\u2019Brien\/kobpix <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

His isn\u2019t the only waltz of the night. The Apprentice contestant Jordan Dorgan also dances one \u2013 though he is thrown when he mishears \u201cViennese waltz\u201d as \u201cVietnamese waltz\u201d. He also suffers from dizziness during rehearsals, though on the night he and Rebecca Scott perform adequately, with a score of 25.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 and her excitement is infectious.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s an unhappy punchline for the internet comedian Michael Fry as he becomes the first contestant to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[141300,141299,5071,18,117,19,17,133434,61956,49410],"class_list":{"0":"post-280138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-arthur-gourounlian","9":"tag-brian-redmond","10":"tag-dancing-with-the-stars","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-jennifer-zamparelli","16":"tag-laura-fox","17":"tag-oti-mabuse"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115879508992410446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}