Denise Van Outen has said she has been partying in her kitchen with boyfriend Eddie Boxshall and Dancing On Ice partner Matt Evers during lockdown.
The professional skater has moved in with the couple and Van Outen’s daughter Betsy, 10, to form a bubble as the duo train for the ITV show.
Van Outen, 46, told the PA news agency: “We had a mini kitchen disco, because my other half Eddie DJs, so he brought the decks in.
“There was only three of us and we had a little kitchen party but that was a one-off, that won’t be happening again for a while.
“We said we need a bit of music and a dance and we had a couple of cocktails and danced around. A party for three, it was hilarious.”
Van Outen added that taking part in the show has helped her earn “cool mum” points with her daughter and it has been a huge help to have Evers living in the family home.
She said: “We’ve kept our bubble very small, we’ve stuck to all the rules, we’re just basically trying to get through our training and not miss out and isolate at any point because then we lose training time.
“It just made sense for us, we’ve got the space here for him to live with us, Eddie gets on great with him, Betsy loves him being in the house with us.
“First lockdown it was just us. She thinks that’s quite exciting, telling her school friends we’ve got one of the Dancing On Ice pros living in the house, and I’ve been spoilt because between Eddie and Matt, they’ve been cooking for me, so I’ve loved it.”
Before she takes to the ice, Van Outen will next be seen lending her voice to the character Professor Polonium in a special feature-length episode of animation Fireman Sam.
She said: “I always wanted to voice a character in animation, but I always said if I’m going to do it I’d rather play a bit of a baddie, or someone that causes a bit of trouble, because it’s quite nice to just play around with your voice and also just create this character and I loved every second of it.”
She added: “Normally when I do voiceovers I’m myself, like with The Only Way Is Essex, I’ve voiced it for 10 years.
“This was nice to see the artwork and see drawings of Professor Polonium and actually then build the character around it with my voice.
“The only way you can really do it is if you properly act it out visually, so that’s why it’s quite funny, because as I was doing it I was really getting into it.”
The actress, who recently wowed the judges as the fox on The Masked Singer, said her starring role in the animation has impressed her young daughter.
She said: “I think she’s more excited about this than anything else I’ve ever done because it’s something as a child you all have your animations that you loved, so she’s really excited and I think she thinks this is quite cool.
“I’m sort of ticking a lot of the cool mum boxes at the moment with Betsy. I think the first one was doing The Masked Singer, she just thought that was the coolest thing ever that I was the fox, because all her friends at school were talking about it.
“Then obviously doing Fireman Sam and now doing Dancing On Ice, Mum’s pretty cool at the moment.”
Fireman Sam: Norman Price and the Mystery in the Sky will be on Cartoonito on Saturday December 5 at 5pm.