Stefan Booth Online

EXCLUSIVE: DOCTORS TOLD ME TO QUIT BUT I AM SKATING THROUGH PAIN BARRIER

Bill actor Stefan Booth pushes his body to the limit to defy medics and compete in ice show
By Rick Fulton

CROCKED Dancing On Ice star Stefan Booth is so numbed with painkillers he claims he could become a human pin cushion and not notice.

The handsome actor, who starred in The Bill and Hollyoaks, is in constant pain, but will attempt to impress the judges and public tonight by letting partner Kristina Cousins SOMERSAULT off his back.

As well as being in excruciating pain with a dislocated left shoulder, he also has tendonitis in both knees.

The 26-year old skate hopeful said: "I don't want time off because I'm skating six hours a day at the moment.

"However, I'm falling apart and in pain all the time. It puts me off warming up to go on the ice and when I get up in the mornings I feel like Wurzel Gummidge.

"I'm so dosed up on painkillers I could be a human pin cushion and I wouldn't know it.

"I've got tendonitis in my knees and a dislocated shoulder, which is called a sprung shoulder. David Seaman has had the same thing, and the last time it made him retire from football.

"I went to see a Harley Street doctor this week and he told me I needed rest and to stop skating, but I told him I couldn't afford to do that."

During training for last Saturday's show on ITV1, Stefan was practising for a knee slide.

The idea was he had to turn on the slide and kick his legs around into a forward press up.

But in rehearsals he slipped and his arm jack-knifed underneath his back, making his shoulder blades hit the ice. In doing so his left collar-bone popped out.

Stefan admitted: "It doesn't feel like it belongs to me and I've lost a lot of strength in my shoulder.

"It's not so much the pain that I'm worried about, but the lack of strength because my collar-bone isn't connected to my shoulder properly."

Which isn't good news for Kristina.

Their routine for tonight's show contains an overhead back flip, which Stefan describes as a somersault. He admits Kristina is having serious doubts and they've had some fights about her putting her life in his hands.

He said: "She has to trust me that I can do it properly.

"I won't let anything get in the way of doing a good performance."

Stefan knows he has a lot to prove. Last week he was voted into the bottom two by the public, along with television presenter Andi Peters.

But the judges decided to save Stefan, meaning Andi was the second celebrity to leave the competition.

Stefan said: ""We have to make sure everything is safe and rehearsed because when I pick up Kristina, we'll both land on our backsides and that's not an option.

"I haven't dropped her once in rehearsals."

Ice packs ease the pain and he will have his shoulder strapped up for tonight's performance.

Kristina, a Canadian skater and the principle performer for The Royal Caribbean, must be brave to even attempt a lift, let along a spectacular somersault with someone with such an injury.

But she is also keen to stay in the competition, which is being watched by around 11 million viewers a week.

Stefan and Kristina got a good response from the judges last week, but fell down with the public - and the actor thinks he knows why.

Stefan said: "I think people just thought 'he'll be fine because he was in the middle of the scoring table and doesn't need a vote to keep him in the competition.' But that's a typical example of how the audience vote can change things.

"Luckily Kristina and I really stepped up a gear for the skate off and probably did our best ever routine, which saved us from being kicked off.

"But tonight I don't want to be in that situation so Bill and Hollyoaks fans, please vote for me."

THE celebs still in the line-up include Scots John Barrowman and Andrea McLean, as well as David Seaman, Gaynor Faye, Bonnie Langford, Sean Wilson and Dame Kelly Holmes.

Despite his poor public vote last week, Stefan still thinks he has a good chance thanks to his kamikaze attitude of throwing everything (and himself it seems) into being the best.

He said: "I don't feel any pressure. I wasn't nervous at the skate off with Andi last week because I didn't get bad scoring from the judges."

The actor has a competitive nature. He went to Monkton Combe School in Bath and was a rower at a school which boasted world class sportsmen like Alex Partridge and also Steve Williams, who won a gold medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Stefan stopped rowing after school, but has kept up his fitness levels with various jobs, such as being a tree surgeon.

Like most of the celebs, he has little or no experience on ice, indeed his only time on the surface was two birthday treats when he was much younger.

He said: "It's one thing going forward on a pair of hire skates, it's another being taught how to stand properly, skate properly, hold somebody, spin them lift them up in the air, all like a ballet dancer on ice and then finally stand and be proud.

"Dancing On Ice has taken every drop of energy and passion that I have."

The actor, who has an older sister and brother, was brought up on a farm near Newbury in Berkshire with mum Mish, a trained opera singer, and dad Tony, who works as a cameraman at pop concerts.

His mum is wheelchair-bound since suffering from a debilitating kidney disease and fell into a coma twice during his teens. Now she can only walk with a crutch for 10 metres before she has to rest.

It's that home life that has shaped Stefan and in September 2004, he spent four days with Armenia's 'forgotten children' for charity World Vision to raise awareness of the disabled.

He said: "I have seen people's reaction to the disabled. I remember about 10 years ago when we were in a supermarket and people not speaking to my mum.

"They'd ask my father if she'd like something, when she was right there and had her own opinion. People's attitudes are changing in this country, but elsewhere, like Armenia, they haven't. If a child is born with any kind of impairment, even a hair lip, the doctor offers the family the chance to put the child in an orphanage, basically to institutionalise their child.

"I'm planning to go out again this year."

Stefan is best known as Hollyoaks stud Jamie Nash and gay copper Sgt. Mark Rollins in The Bill, but he's also been in Martin Clunes' show William and Mary and had a bit part in Bridget Jones's Diary.

This year he will appear in a new British comedy film Back in Business with Martin Kemp, Brian Blessed, Dennis Waterman and Chris Barrie.

Stefan said: "It's not the typical career move to work on a show as an ice skater when you are an actor and you're trying to maintain a level of anonymity. But I couldn't resist because it's more an entertainment-based show where we actually learn a skill."

As well as his family, Stefan is being cheered on by his gorgeous girlfriend Debbie Flett, a model and presenter.

The pair met in Mauritius while filming a TV drama called Breakwater and have been dating for two years, sealing the relationship by buying their first house together in West London.

Stefan has even tempted Debbie to join him on to the ice. He said: "We were in Cape Town at Christmas and I took her ice skating it was an absolute riot.

"When she first came on the ice I was thinking: 'Wow, I was just like you a few months ago,' and it made me feel I'd really achieved something. "I wanted to show her what I have been learning."

'I'm worried about the lack of strength because my collar - bone is not connected to my shoulder properly'

28 January 2006
Source: Daily Record