Denise Van Outen says gruelling Dancing On Ice training has worked wonders for her legs

DENISE Van Outen has revealed the gruelling training for Dancing On Ice has worked wonders for her legs.

The Nineties pin-up said she’d the last three months of training had done wonders for her fitness as she prepared to take to the rink for the first show on Sunday.

Denise, 47, said: “It’s a good workout for the legs. I have got the thigh burn every single day.

“I am eternally lazy in terms of, I was very lucky in my 20s and 30s in the way that I got away with a lot by just being a hyperactive person, always running around .

“Now I train for a minimum of three times a week and I guess from doing the skating I have noticed I have got more toned as well.”

Denise, who found fame on The Big Breakfast in the early Nineties, is no stranger to performing.

She was a runner-up on Strictly Come Dancing in 2012 and has had regular stints on the West End stage, most notably as leading lady Roxie Hart in Chicago in 2001.

But Denise, who lives in Essex with her partner, commodities trader Eddie Boxshall, 45, and her daughter, Betsy, 10, from her marriage to Lee Mead, 39, said she’s so terrified about injuring herself on the ice she is struggling to sleep.

She said: “I have found the skating really hard, I am not going to lie. I am really scared.

“When I wake up in the morning I remember how lucky I am to have this opportunity, even if I am petrified while I am on the ice and I think I am going to fall over.

“I woke up at 3am this morning going through the routine in my head. “I was going through it, and I was thinking, ‘What has happened to me?’

“I was in bed and I was making my feet do the moves in the bed, trying not to wake up Eddie.”

Denise has been paired with American pro skater Matt Evers, 44, who made history during the last series of the show by becoming one half of Dancing On Ice’s same sex partnership with Ian ‘H’ Watkins.

But while they made waves on the ice, Denise said she feared she could let Matt down in the competition.

Denise added: “I feel a real pressure to keep him in the show for as long as I can.

“Because of our pro skaters and the whole lockdown situation, a lot of them have been waiting all year to do this show. Matt for example, we locked down last March and he had just finished the show with H.

“He was meant to be flying back to America to see his family but he had to stay. He hasn’t been home.

“So for him, he has waited all year to do this and I feel if I go out in week one, I will feel really guilty.”