Siva Kaneswaran’s tribute to his late The Wanted bandmate on Dancing On Ice this Sunday evening will be supported by Tom Parker’s widow Kelsey Parker and her children.
The skating celebs will perform a personal routine this week, with the 34-year-old singer – and his professional partner Klabera Komini – skating to his band’s own single Gold Forever in memory of the late icon, who died from a brain tumour last March.
Kelsey Parker plans to attend the special event with her and Tom’s daughters Aurelia, three, and Bodhi, two, despite she admits the homage will likely ‘break’ her.
‘I’ve told the kids we’re going to watch Uncle Siva, that he’s dancing to Daddy’s song, and there will be images of Daddy around,’ she told the Sunday Mirror newspaper.
‘It’s going to be incredibly difficult for me to sit there, since the song makes me so emotional,’ the mother-of-two remarked.
‘But then it’s bittersweet because I’m going to be so proud of Shiva and I want to celebrate Tom. We lost him about a year ago, and he would still want to be in everyone’s thoughts.
‘So why wouldn’t we celebrate him? But it doesn’t make it any less hard.
‘That we are going to watch someone pay tribute to Tom, dancing to his song is incredible, but it is going to break me.’
Kelsey stated that she felt it was ‘essential’ to maintain Tom’s name in the public spotlight in order to advocate for increased funding for brain tumour research.
She said: ‘I have a platform and I want to use it. Tom would have wanted me to use it too.
‘It is shocking how little funding goes into researching brain tumours, and I have the passion to campaign for more, because it really infuriates me.
‘If more funding was channelled into that research, Tom would be here. That is why it is so important that we are still talking about him, and that Siva will go on Dancing on Ice tonight to celebrate him.
‘I know that whatever he does will be beautiful. It will be tough, but I am going to take deep breaths and try to enjoy it.’
Dancing On Ice continues tonight at 6:30pm on ITV1.