Gobsmacked about Soxy. Once again the public phone vote takes its undiscriminating razor to a celebrity challenge show and, before his sequins are even properly warm, Graeme Le Saux gets sliced off Dancing on Ice in week one.

What a cruel mistress pro-celebrity ice dance can be. A month of training, one 90-second routine in the spotlight and then, bang - you're handing your skates in at the desk and heading home with a bunch of flowers you didn't ask for.

Nobody deserves that. Correction: somebody did - Todd Carty, the former EastEnders actor. It was, one appreciates, early in the series. Nevertheless, if the contest had been entitled “Standing on Ice”, Carty would still have found himself struggling to qualify.

In the skate-on at the start, only the firmest of restraining arms from Susie Lipanova, his professional partner, prevented the actor from continuing out the other side of the ITV studio and ending up across the corridor on All Star Family Fortunes. Seeing Lipanova lead him across the rink, in what passed for their “routine”, was like watching someone from a home for the terminally bewildered being guided across a busy road by an inspiringly patient, if underdressed, carer.

Two words, though: “Sergeant” and “John”. You didn't need a research fellowship in media studies to work out what was unfolding here. Even the staunchest fans of Dancing on Ice would be prepared to admit that the programme has been assembled using the blueprint for the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing and some tracing paper, its sole concessions to originality being a) that frozen surface and b) a fifth judge - which, frankly, we need like we need a hole in the ice.

Now, whether this imitation is sincere flattery or actionable plagiarism had probably better be a question for another day. But suffice it to say that when Tony Gubba, the new-risen voice of pro-celebrity ice dance, pirated a Bruce Forsyth catchphrase during his Saturday commentary (“Didn't he do well?”), the sound of barristers sniffing the air for a fee was almost audible. (“Back off, Gubba”, would seem to be the message coming out of Chancery.)

Still, just as Strictly had its inept but loveable, headline-generating no-hoper, kept alive by public sentiment, so, too, apparently, must Dancing on Ice. One understands the pressure for ratings, but we are on the verge of anarchy here. Soon people will be accusing these shows of being popularity contests, rather than measures of sporting excellence, and then the jig really will be up, right across celebrity television.

The blurring of the rubric claimed a talented victim in Le Saux. There was some round-one tentativeness but, essentially, the former Chelsea and England left back didn't put a foot wrong - as expected from a man who learnt a lot about treading carefully when he represented the Rwandan mountain gorilla on Extinct, ITV's 2006 conservation dust-up. One false “rotating carry-lift” with those guys and you know all about it.

“That's the teapot,” said Gubba, whose grasp of the technicalities continues to astound those of us who still think of him, first and foremost, as the undisputed master of the post-synch'd goal description on Match of the Day.

“The pull-through, followed there by the swan-split ...” Gubba went on. Is one allowed to split a swan? Isn't that only the Queen?

The judges were comfortable enough with Le Saux's promise, raising serious objections only to the wisdom of his costume. Ice dance is one of those rare events in which people will complain about a jacket not because it has a lime-green trim, but because it tends to ride up around the neck, spoiling the lines.

Dumped into the dance-off, after the public vote, Le Saux duly showed a willingness to listen to the judges and ditched the jacket. He also danced with renewed purpose. Indeed, when he split the swan that second time, it stayed split.

But he was up against Donal MacIntyre. Many believed the undercover investigator would get found out at this level. There is, after all, no hiding place in pro-celebrity ice dance. In fact, MacIntyre seemed to revel in the open spaces and the judges had little alternative but to wave him through.

We've still got Ellery Hanley, I suppose. The rugby league legend showed promise and promptly went on an opportunistic PR blitz in the “cry and wave” area. (“It's the most beautiful sport I've ever taken part in” etc.) But it will be some time before we shake off the sense of loss and searing regret about what might have been had Le Saux survived.

Was the choice of music for his routine - I've Got You Under My Skin - a cheeky nod to his career-long susceptibility to a wind-up? Possibly. But one thing is certain. In the dignity of his going, the big-smiling former footballer found, albeit briefly, a kind of redemption here - and even a noble revenge. Were you watching, Robbie Fowler? Eat Soxy's teapot, Spice Boy.