“I am the one and only, you can’t take that away from me” sung Chesney Hawkes, as I clumsily knocked over a group of girls at Ice Trax in Tower Park, Poole.

Nearly 20 years on and it’s still the only time I’ve been on an ice rink. But all that was about to change, with the kind offer of an ice-skating master class with Olga Sharutenko. The Russian star of ITV’s Dancing on Ice was in Bournemouth with her new show Cinderella on Ice.

The production features a 25-strong cast of skaters including the cream of Russian skating talent.

While I await my lesson with Olga, 24, I take a moment to strap on my skates and watch a breathtaking rehearsal on the frozen stage of the Pavilion Theatre. To my disbelief, Tony Mercer, the artistic director of Cinderella on Ice, explains that this makeshift rink is actually made of real ice.

“You can be assured it is! In fact there are approximately 14 tons of it on the stage and, hidden beneath the surface, more than 10 miles of pipe work and a few buckets of sweat, all at a working temperature of -15C,” Tony tells me.

As the rehearsals end, the stage empties and Olga is left gracefully spinning like a music box ballerina. The magical scene is quickly broken, as I clatter on the ice to greet her.

As well as the first series of Dancing on Ice, Olga Sharutenko has 15 gold, four silver and 11 bronze figure skating medals to her credit. By the age of eight, Sharutenko, whose mother was also a figure skater, was doing two training sessions a day, six days a week.

Observing my unsteady technique, Olga reassures me, “Don’t worry, at first I couldn’t skate properly. I couldn’t do what the other children were doing because I didn’t start skating until I was six. All the others had started when they were four.”

The first part of the mini-master class was to make a “lemon” in the ice, which involved making the shape of a citrus fruit with our skates. Unfortunately, a lemon on the ice would be a more accurate description of my pitiful attempts.

Undeterred, Olga pressed on with the next manoeuvre that was to skate with one leg straight and push along like on a skateboard.

This I found to be much easier and we soon progressed to the more difficult “slalom”.

Adopting the knees-bent stance of a skier, the demure Russian ice skater clung to me tightly as we circled the ice rink. Try as I might, skiing on ice was another hindrance in my goal to becoming the next Christopher Dean.

Finally, we tried the art of skating backwards. For this I truly was going backwards as I forgot all that Olga had painstakingly taught me.

Still it was a marked improvement, as I hadn’t knocked any unsuspecting girls over on the ice.

Factfile

There are six couples on the tour and three children.

Some of the skating moves have never been attempted before, either in competition or on the stage.

The performers rehearse nine hours a day, six days a week, for seven weeks to pull the show together, and they rehearse for three hours each day before the show.

25 pairs of skates and 50 sets of blades are carried with the troupe on tour.

14 tons of ice are used.

The set is one of the most expensive ever created for a theatrical ice show anywhere in the world. It incorporates three-dimensional scenery, fire, rain, flying and state-of-the-art projection.

No two costumes are the same – each one is individually designed and made, cut by the famous Bolshoi Ballet’s costume cutters.