I arrived early again, to find Lorraine Roberts (ICP2), Skate Lisa (www.skatelisa.co.uk) and Michael Megwa performing some fantastic jam dancing on skates, exactly what they wanted to produce from the kids in the show. I had no idea they skated and danced so well. We don’t get enough opportunities to skate together as we instructors are often (always) working. I also can’t wait to see this number on the TV, to see how they cut it. I know they will look amazing. They had to perform the routine several times so that different camera angles could be used and I was impressed with the quality of the routine and their phenomenal energy.

New outfit, new makeup, different hair, same freezing cold dampness which we couldn’t believe. Being a ‘summer show’ we were dressed in T shirts (Kevin and I) and short glamorous dresses (Camilla), which proved too cold to hang around in so eventually Cas (“one of the best runners we’ve ever had”) produced 3 furry hot water bottles, one for each of the winging judges.

Mine was pink (of course). Camilla and Kevin both went for the white and blue respectively. So as we sat and did our judging job, we all had hot water bottles down the back of our chairs. It helped substantially.

7 more teams, 2 more to go. The deliberation scene at the end of each Heats day was interesting as the 3 of us sat around a table with photos of the teams and discussed their merits. We did not always agree and I found myself having to argue the technical abilities of each team versus Kevin and Camilla’s more artistic opinions. I also wished I had had a manicure when I realised that my skate instructor hands are anything but glamorous and I hadn’t anticipated having them in close up shots.

On my way to lunch I managed to get lost and found myself in a huge room full of the studio audience children eating their packed lunches. As soon as they saw me a small bunch of girls ran towards me shouting ‘there she is, one of the judges who sits next to Camilla’. I was thrust a pencil and paper napkin and asked for an autograph (not a good writing combination). By this time the queue of children waiting for my autograph was huge and I saw no way out but to scribble on their papers (though I doubted they would actually keep them or look at them again). Luckily one of the crewmembers came into the room and rescued me with a brief shout of “There you are Asha, you are needed in make up right away please”.

The hardest part of being a judge (and this would get progressively harder as each week of the show passed) was of course having to make a decision about which teams had to go. Not only did the 3 of us have to decide this between us, but then we also had to tell them to their faces, as they stood in front of us, team by team. We also had to give short explanations to justify our decisions. It was lovely to see the joy and excitement on the faces of the teams who we told could ‘Skate On’, but equally difficult were the looks of disappointment from the teams we told to ‘Skate Home’. A lot of effort and training had gone into attending auditions, being selected, learning the first routine and practising it for the Heats so the support the kids got back stage from family, friends and of course Sam and Mark cheered them up despite having to leave the competition at this stage.

I could see over the course of the show how the children became more and more accustomed to talking in front of cameras. Even for adults this is not an automatic or easy thing to learn. The one bit of advice whispered to me by Camilla on day 1 of the shoot was “Don’t look down the lens. Ever”.

So after 2 days of Heats we had gone from 14 teams down to 10. These 10 teams would then participate in the intensive Skate Camp training to follow during the Easter holidays. I was looking forward to watching them practice and train and to have the opportunity of skating with them.