DJ ADELE ON
Looking to the sky as professional skater Mark Hanretty held her above the ice, Adele Roberts felt she was being lifted by something more powerful.
Her beloved mum, Jackie, had died after a long illness on January 4, days before the former BBC Radio 1 DJ began competing in this year’s Dancing On Ice.
She considered quitting the show, but instead decided to tough it out – to do it for Jackie. So it is no surprise that, as she and Mark began their first performance last Sunday, Adele’s first thought was of her mum.
She says: “When I looked up to the sky at the start of the routine and during that lift, I just visualised my mum.
“I don’t know. It’s almost like I felt her spirit with me.
“It’s such a weird time in my life, but I think my mum was the sort of woman that never gave up. She was ill with her condition for a long time. It’s ataxia. That’s what she had.
“My sisters and my dad, my brothers, all my family have been like, ‘She just wouldn’t want you to give up’.
“I felt like leaving the competition, but then I was like, ‘No, that’s not what your mum would want. She’d want you to try and carry on’.
“So, I thought, ‘Just try and do that routine for her. If you manage to make it through, then it’s the best icing and cherry on the cake’.
Ataxia is a condition which affects co-ordination, balance and speech. It usually results from damage to part of the brain.
There is no cure, and patients’ symptoms generally get worse as time goes on.
Adele’s mum had been ill for some time, and it had affected her life and career for months even before Dancing On Ice began.
“People don’t know this, but it’s the reason I left Radio 1,” Adele, 44, explains.
“So I left Radio 1 last year because I knew my mum was not well, and she wasn’t getting any better.
“I just thought, ‘Now is the time to spend quality time with your mum and just enjoy every single day. Tell her every day that you love her’.
“So, I saw my mum every single day for a whole year, and I could see towards the end and over Christmas she was getting worse and worse. She was really deteriorating fast. I just thought: ‘Just savour every moment’.
“I tried to show her as much as I could about the show. I hoped with all my heart she’d be here for the first show.
“Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be, but I just thought: ‘If I get to do that routine and dedicate it to my mum, then I don’t care what happens after that’.
“I’m just so relieved that we managed to do it.” Sunday’s dance, to Clearly by Grace Vanderwaal, was enough to earn
Adele and Mark joint-top spot on the leaderboard – and she would love nothing more than to win the competition for her mum.
She says: “I took my boots to her, and I got her to give them a kiss for me, so she kissed my boots. And then there was a little bit of my routine that we’d recorded in practice.
“Over Christmas, I took that to her and she saw the start of the video, but because she was so ill towards the end, it was hard for her to concentrate on the screen, so she only saw the start of it.
“I just had that intention in my head on that Sunday: ‘Just finish the routine for your mum’.
“Now I just try and do it week by week. I take each day as it comes.
“I know there’s always twists and turns and surprises, but if I could win it for her, I mean, yeah, that would be amazing.”
Adele, from Southport, Merseyside,