Daniel O'Donnell had an out of body experience during last week's Strictly live show
"There was a period where I didn’t know who I was, where I was," the Irish performer admits
There's no denying that performing on Strictly Come Dancing is a stressful experience, especially during week one when everything is new and unfamiliar. But Daniel O'Donnell says he was so terrified dancing his Waltz that it provoked an out of body experience...
"There was a period where I didn’t know who I was, where I was, and I certainly didn’t know who Kristina was!" he tells Zoe Ball on It Takes Two. "It felt like it lasted forever."
While we might not have noticed his momentary lapse, his professional partner Kristina Rihanoff definitely did.
"I was aware. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s going really well! He’s doing the rise and fall.’ Then he totally forgot where he was going," she says. "It was good in the end, but it felt [that] for ever and ever we [were doing] something wrong!"
"I thought that I was terrible. Then, when I watched it back, it wasn’t too bad at all!" O'Donnell adds.
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Their Waltz to When Irish Eyes Are Smiling secured them a very respectable 24 points and a spot in the top half of the leaderboard. But they did get a low score from the formidable Craig Revel Horwood...
"It’s not very nice to get a 4, but actually 4 was not a bad score from him on Friday and Saturday," says Rihanoff. "He gave lots of 4s and we’re ok with that."
O'Donnell agrees, saying he was "happy enough" with the comments and scores, which he didn't really take in on the live show itself.
"I only watched it last night and I saw the judges’ comments. I hadn’t really heard them," he says. "Then I went up to Claudia and I said nothing. My wife said, ‘You never know, some people might want to come see you sing now, because they’ll see you on this and didn’t know you.’ I said, ‘See me sing?! They’ll have to hear me speak first! They won’t even know that I can speak, never mind sing!’"
A bumper edition of It Takes Two is on tonight from 6:00pm on BBC2
