Dancing On Ice 2021 star Rufus Hound may be about to take centre stage on one of the biggest shows on TV but his career hasn’t always been plain sailing
The comedian once clashed with How Clean Is Your House star and Celebrity Big Brother legend Kim Woodburn so badly that it resulted in his time on Celebrity Juice being cut short.
Rufus was so infuriated by the spat as well as the producers for the fall-out, he decided he didn’t want to return to the ITV2 show at all.
Here we break down exactly what went on between the feisty TV duo when the filming of an episode resulted in chaos.
The cleaner comment that started it all
(Image: ITV)
In 2012 both Kim Woodburn and Rufus were booked to appear on ITV2’s Celebrity Juice alongside Keith Lemon.
During a chat between the three of them Keith, whose real name is Leigh Francis, asked Kim if she had “‘much coming up”.
Kim replied: “I don’t think the people who make TV would want me anymore”.
Rufus then added: “Don’t do yourself down. People will always need a cleaner”.
(Image: James Maloney/Liverpool Echo)
Despite Kim being known for cleaning on How Clean Is Your House and Too Posh To Wash, the outspoken star saw red.
Rufus later said on an podcast: “Now bear in mind, that’s what she’s famous for.
“If I had said that to Jude Law, fair enough. That’s an insult. She’s a cleaner!
“She looked at me and said something on the lines of, ‘When I want an opinion of a fat man, I’ll stand outside Gregg’s’.”
He added: “It was a proper f*** you, an old-fashioned f*** you, and I just sort of laughed to myself that here she was having a dig because I genuinely hadn’t meant it as an insult.
“It really f***ing spiralled out of control.”
Getting personal
(Image: WENN/CHANNEL 5)
After Rufus’ comment Kim is said to have gone all out to get him back and the star claimed Kim ‘was trying to be deliberately personal’.
Kim allegedly kept calling Rufus fat and mocking his weight.
Being a stand up comedian used to hecklers, he jibed back: “That’s a bit rich coming from a woman who looks like a face drawn on a deflating party balloon.”
Kiss and make-up?
Feeling singled out and hard done by, Kim demanded an apology from Rufus and moaned to producers about his actions.
Aware things were escalating, Rufus asked for a copy of the tape and asked if the spat would not be aired on national TV.
Producers are said to have agreed to hand him a copy of the tapes at first but then never produced it for him.
Bosses then asked him to apologise to smooth things over but he wasn’t keen at first as he didn’t believe he had started the row.
He eventually agreed so long as he got a copy of the tape for peace of mind.
Rufus said: “I was like, ‘I will do it because you’re my friends. Here’s one thing, though, right? If I do it, you have to give me a copy of the tape. I know it will never go out. It will never be seen,” Rufus said.
“I will sign whatever it is you need me to sign that says I will never put it on YouTube and I will never show it to people, but I’m sure she started that – by being horrible.
“I want to be able to watch it back, because I want to know for my own peace of mind what happened is how I remember it happened.'”
Quitting the show
(Image: PA)
Rufus says after the clash he decided he no longer wanted to be on Celeb Juice.
He claims he was never given a copy of the tapes despite his deal – alleging the producers later conceded to him they “would never have given that to him”.
Explaining he felt bosses thought he should have been grateful to even be on the show, Rufus added: “That was sort of the point of it all.
“They had this sense of, I should be grateful of being on this big hit show, but what they never understood was, the thing I set out in comedy wasn’t about being on a show like ‘Celebrity Juice’.
“For me to keep being on ‘Celebrity Juice’, they needed to have room for me in it, and they weren’t interested in it.
“And they eventually said, ‘You need to cheer up to be here’, and I said, ‘Make me happy. Cheer me up’. And they said ‘Take two weeks off and think about it’, and then two days later…”
Rufus is now appearing on Dancing on Ice, which airs on Sundays at 6pm on ITV.
