Pat Stacey: Paudie has the dancing skills of a kitchen chair – if he wins, it makes a mockery of RTÉ’s ‘Dancing With the Stars’ | Irish Independent

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Flor Lynch

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Mar 12, 2026, 8:37:29 AM (3 days ago) Mar 12
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The well-worn joke is an insult to the celebrities and professionals who put a lot of hard work into their routines, only to see it tossed into the bin

Oti Mabuse (second right) must be wondering what she's got herself into. Photo: Barry McCall

Paudie Moloney with his pro dance partner Laura Nolan

Paudie Moloney, dancing with partner Laura Nolan, could yet win ‘Dancing With the Stars’, despite having all the mobility of a cathedral statue. Photo: RTÉ

Oti Mabuse (second right) must be wondering what she's got herself into. Photo: Barry McCall

Paudie Moloney with his pro dance partner Laura Nolan


The well-worn joke is an insult to the celebrities and professionals who put a lot of hard work into their routines, only to see it tossed into the bin

Oti Mabuse (second right) must be wondering what she's got herself into. Photo: Barry McCall

Paudie Moloney with his pro dance partner Laura Nolan

Paudie Moloney, dancing with partner Laura Nolan, could yet win ‘Dancing With the Stars’, despite having all the mobility of a cathedral statue. Photo: RTÉ

Oti Mabuse (second right) must be wondering what she's got herself into. Photo: Barry McCall 


Pat Stacey

To borrow a line from Logan Roy in Succession, the viewers voting on RTÉ One’s Dancing With the Stars “are not serious people”.

If they were, they wouldn’t have voted Paudie Moloney from The Traitors Ireland through to next Sunday’s final at the expense of more capable contestants.

This has been the pattern from the start of this year’s run of DWTS. The celebrities and their professional partners dance their hearts out. Judges Oti Mabuse, Brian Redmond, Arthur Gourounlian and Karen Byrne score their performances according to merit.

Enter the viewers, who no doubt voted for Paudie for a laugh. Paudie goes through to the next round while someone more deserving ends up having an early bath.

This is what’s been happening week after week. The judges vote one way, Joe and Mary Public do the opposite. The latest casualty of Paudiemania is former Apprentice candidate Jordan Dargan, who’d been one of the favourites to win the competition.

In last Sunday’s semi-final, he faced a dance-off against singer-songwriter Tolü Makay, another consistently high-scoring contestant who should never have found herself on the cusp of elimination either.

Mind you, this wasn’t her first time. The public vote has unfairly relegated Tolü to the dance-off several times this season. Make of that what you will.

Jordan lost and went home. Paudie sailed on into the final. You don’t have to be especially knowledgeable about the finer points of dancing to tell that something seriously wrong is going on here. 


Personally, I wouldn’t know a paso doble from a double pepperoni pizza, but I can still recognise steaming bullshit when I smell it.

To be fair to Paudie, who became an overnight celebrity after his performance on The Traitors Ireland (which says something about how little it takes to achieve fame in this country), it’s not his fault.

The 68-year-old former prison guard seems to be a likeable, down to earth man. But let’s be honest: when it comes to dazzling on the dancefloor, he has the mobility of a cathedral statue and the grace of a kitchen chair tumbling down a flight of stars.

Oti Mabuse (second right) must be wondering what she's got herself into. Photo: Barry McCall

To witness him lifting partner Laura Nolan, while dancing the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers classic Cheek to Cheek, was like watching someone struggling to carry a sack of coal up a steep hill while trying very hard not to fall over. On the basis of his performances, Paudie shouldn’t be anywhere near the final. Yet it’s conceivable, even likely, he’ll end up winning the competition.

A part of him might be hoping he doesn’t because even he must realise it would be a travesty. The joke, amusing for about five minutes, has worn thin. 


It undermines the credibility of DWTS, which, love it or loathe it, is RTÉ’s flagship weekend entertainment series and an important source of sponsorship and advertising revenue.

It’s also an insult to the licence payers whose money goes toward the estimated €3m it costs to produce the show each year

How will those advertisers feel if people start tuning out because the show has become a mockery of what it’s supposed to be?

It’s an insult to the celebrities and professionals who put a lot of hard work into their routines, only to see it tossed into the bin because some eejits sitting at home see voting for a man who can’t dance as “a bit of craic”. 


It’s also an insult to the licence payers whose money goes toward the estimated €3m it costs to produce the show each year.

There’s been a backlash against the foolishness of it all on social media. 


... 



, a Latin dance champion who was a professional on seven seasons of BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing and a judge on ITV’s Dancing on Ice, has struggled to hide her bewilderment and exasperation. She must be wondering what the hell she’s got herself into.

It’s reminiscent of the Eurovision debacle of 2008 when the great Irish public chose Dustin the Turkey to represent Ireland – also, presumably, as “a bit of craic”.

But the joke meant nothing to the baffled semi-final audience in the Belgrade Arena, or to the other European countries who felt Ireland was ridiculing the contest by entering a glove puppet.

Dustin may be a national treasure, but this was an international embarrassment. Democracy works fine for general elections. Just keep it out of DWTS. 






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