JOEY Essex has revealed he shares a "special" bond with professional ice skater Vanessa Bauer.

The Dancing On Ice finalist, 32, gushed about their connection after being paired up on the ITV show and said he hoped they'd continue to see each other after Sunday's final.

Ex Towie star Joey told The Sun: "Me and Vanessa have a great bond. We’ve always got on with each other since day one.

"It’s very special. It’ll be nice to see what’s going on on the outside.

"We’re mainly just in the ice rink to be honest, doing inside edges."

"We’re taking it day by day," Vanessa added about their blossoming romance.

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"We’ve got the final ahead of us, so all our focus is definitely on the performance."

The pair came close to kissing on air during Dancing On Ice's movie week.

They skated to High School Musical's Breaking Free dressed as lead characters Troy and Gabrielle.

But the reality TV favourite, 32, was left red faced during the competition when his pro partner swerved the smooch – despite them growing very close off the ice.

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Joey has now revealed they did in fact discuss the kiss beforehand but Vanessa was “too overwhelmed” to go through with it.

He explained: “Basically we planned to kiss before we went out, didn’t we?”

Vanessa revealed: “It was overwhelming for me in the moment in the live show with the camera on us.”

Joey continued: “And I asked Vanessa over 10 times ‘you wouldn’t pull away, would ya? You want me to kiss ya right?’

“She goes ‘yeah, I want you to kiss me’, I go ‘OK, you wouldn’t pull away though?’ ‘I wouldn’t pull away’ and yeah…

“She says she still thinks she didn’t pull away, I said ‘did you see the picture’?

“Anyway it’s very fresh to get pied like that. I feel like it was good for me and I’m taking it as a positive. Yeah I styled it out well.”

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