Strictlys

Strictly Come Dancing professional Karen Hauer shared an update with her fans on Instagram following a tough night with just hours to go until the latest live show

Strictly Come Dancing star Karen Hauer shared an update on her dog Betty’s health after she underwent surgery. The pro dancer let her fans know that Betty is home and recovering following the procedure.

The beloved pet was recently diagnosed with cancer and has now been undergoing further tests to assess her condition. Betty was seen wearing a blue surgical recovery suit in a snap uploaded to Karen’s stories on Instagram.

She wrote over the post, “Our brave girl is home. A little bit out of it after surgery, but she’s doing so well. Now we wait for results.” She then shared a further update with a video where Betty was laying in her bed while Karen sat beside her on the floor stroking her ears.

In the clip Karen admitted that she and boyfriend, former rugby player Simon Davidson, hadn’t had much sleep with just hours to go before she had to head to work for tonight’s live Strictly show alongside her celebrity partner Harry Aikines-Aryeetey. However, she did admit that Betty had got a good night’s rest and was recovering well from her surgery.

Speaking in the clip Karen said, “Just a little update on Betty. She slept okay last night, even though there were fireworks, and she’s not a fan of fireworks. But she managed to get some rest. Simon and I, really we didn’t get much sleep.

“He’s about to go running in a bit and then I’m going off to work in a bit as well. But she is very comfortable in her little suit, and all the other doggies are giving her some love. Even though they want to give her cuddles and kisses they’re trying to be good and stay away from her now.

“But she’s doing good. Our little baby. One day at a time. “

Then, in a further update she showed Betty heading out for a gentle walk with Simon, while still wearing her surgery suit. Karen shared the devastating news of Betty’s diagnosis with her fans on social media last month.

At the time she shared pictures of Betty, including some from recent vet appointments, and explained, “Last week Simon felt two small lumps on Betty’s belly and under her armpit. We took her to the vet, and the results showed traces of cancer. Our hearts broke.

“It’s grade one as far as we know, and our vets have been absolutely incredible. They’ll be doing further tests to make sure they have all the info and can guide us through the next steps to give our Betty the best treatment possible.”

She then issued a warning to fans over their own pets as she continued, “Please check your fur babies for any lumps or bumps… early detection can make all the difference.”

Strictly Come Dancing airs tonight on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

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Strictly Come Dancing contestant Amber Davies has revealed how she is blocking out the noise as she continues to face harsh backlash over her past dance experience

Amber Davies has hit back at her critics as she opened up on struggling to win over the public on Strictly Come Dancing. The Love Island star, 29, has been heaped with praise for her dance skills on the BBC show alongside pro Nikita Kuzmin after being drafted in at the last minute.

Strictly’s judges have backed her throughout the competition as she has consistently placed high on the leaderboard since stepping in after Dani Dyer’s exit. However, in a shock twist of fate, Amber ended up in the bottom two last month alongside footballer Jimmy Floyd Hasslebaink following the public vote.

She has faced strong criticism over her previous dance experience, with some viewers declaring she has an unfair advantage. Since Love Island, Amber has gone on to make a name for herself on the West End having appeared in Legally Blonde and 9 to 5.

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Her past has appeared to haunt her experience on Strictly as she faces harsh comments from fans of the show. However, Amber has now admitted that it has been that way for a while in the competition.

She is pals with 2023 runner-up Layton Williams, who was also paired with Nikita and faced backlash over his dance past. “It comes up every single year — there’s someone who is a performer or in that realm,” Amber said.

“So I am doing my very best not to look and listen to anything,” she told the Sun. “I’m blocking out that noise and just being present in the moment.”

To help battle the outside noise, Amber said she is putting her and Nikita “in a bubble”. She revealed her motto has been to “just zone in and be present”.

Layton has also thrown his support behind her as he urged his fans to back Amber. She said her pages have now been flooded with much more positive comments, which she says is the “nicest thing”.

Amber ended up in the dance off last month, but judges Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse, Shirley Ballas and Anton Du Beke all decided to keep her in the competition. After Jimmy’s shock exit, Amber took to social media, where she said she felt like “absolute garbage”.

The reality TV star held onto a photo of her and Nikita performing while standing in her pyjamas. She lip synched a clip that admitted: “I woke up this morning and I felt like absolute garbage, for anyone who wants to know what garbage is, that is French for trash.”

Amber added: “A gut-wrenching evening in the dance off, especially dancing against two of the most amazing people I’ve met on this experience, @official_jfhasselbaink & @laurenmayoakley.

“I feel extremely lucky & thankful to be able to experience Halloween week on Strictly, but there will be two very special people missed.

“If you voted for us, really really thank you, I guess this week we aim for a comeback week?! @nikita_kuzmin Thank you for holding my extremely shaky hands extra tight.”

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Karen Hauer has hit back at the judges after her Argentine tango split the panel on last week’s heat of Strictly Come Dancing where she set an Argentine tango to an Usher track

Karen Hauer has hit back at the judges after her Argentine tango split the panel on last week’s Strictly Come Dancing. The professional dancer, 43, crafted a routine set to Usher track Caught Up and it received a mixed reaction from Shirley Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke.

During an appearance with celebrity partner Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, who is known for starring on BBC’s Gladiators, on Friday’s Halloween edition of It Takes Two, Karen was asked if she will be avoiding the dance from now on. She joked: “”Probably! That’s fine.”

The star then insisted that she really enjoyed doing it and she ‘got the assignment‘ and did what she was asked to do even though it is ‘a shame’ how it all turned out.

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She added: “No, do you know what? I absolutely loved that and it’s just a shame sometimes. If you want me to do an Argentine classical, then give me the music and I’ll do it. I got the assignment!”

“That was the assignment! Literally. I was just a bit like…we had a really beautiful balance. The judges have a really hard job to do, I just wish they liked it!”

During the live show, Craig claimed that the couple, who eventually received a combined score of 30 for their efforts. seemed to simply be ‘walking’ the routine. He said: “I felt like you were walking through it, standing, placing, standing, placing and not actually dancing step to step.

“And I wasn’t entirely fond of throwing all the groove stuff in there.”

But Harry was not afraid to hit back at the comments as they happened. He said: “I was given a task to do an Argentine tango to Usher. I took it on, I done it to the best of my ability and that’s all I can do.” The dance was all done as part of Icons week, and big music names like Dolly Parton, Spice Girls and Johnny Cash were also honoured, amongst a whole host of others.

Fans at home rushed to social media to defend Harry and Karen amid the negative feedback. One said: “Why have an Icons week, make the celebs dance to music that’s not really suited to the dance then criticise them for bringing a bit of the icon’s style into the dance? Bal and Harry especially.”

Another said: “what are they even talking about obviously an argentine tango to USHER is gna be a little different #Strictly” and a third added: “I dont get the “whyd you add groove/ bump n grind” comments… you gave the guy Usher to mimic?? with an argentine tango?? so like what was he supposed to do.”

Harry has already had a taste of Strictly before making his debut as a contestant on this year’s series. He appeared on last year’s Christmas special where he was partnered with professional dancer Nancy Xu.

The sports star bagged one of the highest scores in the episode but lost to RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Tayce, who had danced with Kai Widdrington.

Announcing his return for the new series, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey said: “After the Christmas Special, it was so nice I just had to do it twice! I’m so excited to be part of the Strictly family this series and I’m ready to give it all I’ve got.

“I’ll be bringing tons of energy to light up the dance floor. Let’s hope I’m as quick picking up the routines as I am on the track.”

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EastEnders star Balvinder Sopal, who plays Suki Panesar, has paid tribute to Strictly Come Dancing presenters Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman

Strictly matriarchs Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly will be sorely missed, says EastEnders star Balvinder Sopal. This week the presenting duo shocked everyone when they announced they would be departing the show at the end of the current series. Balvinder, 46, paid tribute to the “caring” and “supportive” pair.

“People are sad to lose them and their iconic presence on Strictly,” said the actress, who plays Suki Panesar. “They’re so brilliant. They’re powerful, they’re funny, they’re sexy. They’re sassy, they look amazing, they’re of a certain age and they still power through. They’re engaging, they draw audiences in, people tune in sometimes for them. It’s incredible what they’ve done for the show and for us.”

“They’re the best of friends and they come across like that. How lucky are we to be able to absorb that energy and be taken care of? They’re the matriarchs of the show, they really have taken care of Strictly Come Dancing in the best possible way. And what an inspiration for us as well, to be looking up to such women like that.”

Soap star Balvinder – who danced the quickstep to Texas Hold ‘Em by Beyoncé last night with partner Julian Caillon – described is an “end of an era” and said it’s a privilege to dance in their final season.

“They are of the old school of Strictly, the time of Len Goodman and Bruce Forsyth. They bring all of that legacy. So now when they depart, we’re going to have two new people that are going to provide the show with a different direction. Things come to an end and we just have to reinvent and move on. Let’s see what happens. They’re big boots to fill.”

Tess and Claudia announced their departure from the show on Thursday (23 October) in a joint video, where they said: “After 21 wonderfully joyful years on Strictly, we have decided that the time is right to step aside.”

They added that they have a pact to leave together. In a separate statement, Tess referred to Strictly as her “third child” and “second family” and promised she wasn’t going to stop watching Strictly but felt it was time to “hand over the reins”.

“We were always going to leave together and now feels like the right time. We will have the greatest rest of this amazing series and we just want to say an enormous thank you to the BBC and to every single person who works on the show. They’re the most brilliant team and we’ll miss them every day. We will cry when we say the last ‘keep dancing’ but we will continue to say it to each other. Just possibly in tracksuit bottoms at home while holding some pizza.”

Sources close to the pair, who always had a pact to leave together at the same time, suggested they had told the top show execs of their plan some weeks ago, but their video on social media caught many of the Strictly cast and crew off guard. Insiders said privately Tess and Claudia have been discussing the idea of leaving for around a year.

A TV source said: “The feeling is Tess and Claudia wanted to go out at the top and whilst the show is still huge and shortly after they received MBEs. Announcing it mid series also gives them a bit of a swansong and doesn’t take the spotlight away from the winner.

“Claudia is right at her career peak with The Traitors and other TV offers flooding in. Tess has been hosting the show for more than two decades and like that idea of more weekends with her family and her friends.

“The recent scandals around the show have also impacted the ratings a little bit and there might be more around the corner, so they weighed it up and feel it is the right time to quit.”

Another source close to the duo said: “They always said they would go together when they felt right and it just feels right this year.”

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Vicky Pattison left fans in stitches after her Strictly partner Kai Widdrington exposed how she acts during rehearsals on the Get A Grip podcast

Strictly Come Dancing star Vicky Pattison’s partner Kai Widdrington has revealed a hilarious behind-the-scenes habit.

Appearing together on the Get A Grip podcast hosted by Angela Scanlon, 41, and the TV star, 30, Kai teased that his celebrity partner pulls funny facial expressions during training. “We discovered this week the ‘Stank face’,” the 30-year-old joked. “When she’s really trying she’ll (acts it out).”

To which Vicky replied: “It’s like a toddler doing a poo. It’s awful. And I am not proud of it. I’m really upset.” Angela chimed in, “It is like an upside-down puppy,” while Vicky agreed, laughing, “Yeah… it’s like an old man.” This week, Vicky has been candid about the pressures of the competition. In a recent interview with Women’s Health UK, the 37-year-old admitted training has felt like “a baptism of fire.”

“All the pros are carved like angels, and I’m there sweating away in my gym gear,” she said.

“It’s both intimidating and overwhelming. But as you get older, you don’t often get the opportunity to get out of your comfort zone. I like to prove I’m capable.”

While she’s built physical strength through weight training, Pilates, and charity treks, Vicky fears it’s the cardio that might hold her back. “Everyone is so fit,” she added.

Reflecting on her earlier reality TV days, Vicky said she felt less pressure entering the I’m A Celebrity… jungle in 2015, saying, “When you went into the jungle, everyone thought you were an arsehole, but you knew you could go in and change people’s perceptions,” a friend once told her.

“Now I’ve spent 10 years working to show people that I was young, making mistakes, and I wasn’t the best version of myself… I’m scared that under this spotlight, I’ll mess up.”

The Heart radio presenter also revealed she’s returned to therapy. “Maybe it’s working-class feelings of being undeserving. Maybe it’s deep-rooted self-doubt. I don’t know what it is, but it’s all come back,” she said.

Last week on Strictly Come Dancing, the Geordie Shore star and her partner performed a Gatsby‑themed Charleston and earned a total of 25 points from the judges, despite receiving mixed feedback from the judges.

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Chris McCausland won the 2024 series of Strictly Come Dancing with professional partner Dianne Buswell, but the pair faced a number of challenges during their time on the show

Comedian Chris McCausland‘s triumph on last year’s Strictly Come Dancing came despite numerous obstacles – but not all of them were related to the Liverpool-born comedian’s retinitis pigmentosa, which robbed him of his sight almost entirely in his early twenties.

Indeed, he reveals, even if he’d retained his vision, he might have lost it regardless during rehearsal sessions for the programme.

While Chris and professional dance partner Dianne Buswell were rehearsing their Samba for Halloween Week, the Australian professional dancer, who is expecting her first child with boyfriend Joe Sugg, kicked backwards a touch too vigorously.

Chris remembers that the dancer “caught me so hard in the face that I almost threw up and had to lie down for twenty minutes to recover”.

In his new autobiography, Keep Laughing, he continues: “I took the entire impact of her flying foot right on one eyeball. It’s honestly a good job they didn’t work already or I would have been doing that dance half blind anyway and Strictly would have had an insurance payout like no other.”

But the biggest challenge to the dancing pair wasn’t Chris’ condition, but Dianne’s.

Their apparently effortless Week Eight Couple’s Choice routine to John Lennon’s 1970 classic Instant Karma masked a hidden crisis.

The dramatic performance featured a sudden blackout which, Chris reveals, was intended to transport the studio audience and BBC viewers into his world of darkness. It was an extraordinary television moment, and both the programme’s judges and fans had an enormous emotional reaction.

However, what nobody else realised was that Dianne had been genuinely struggling in the lead-up to the live programme.

Chris revealed: “The only downside to this dance for us was that Dianne had been really ill all day, so we hadn’t been able to enjoy it as much as we would have liked.”

Dianna had been battling a stomach bug, and Chris quipped that the daring moment when the stage lights returned after the blackout to show him spinning rapidly with Dianne draped across his shoulders could have had some very nasty outcomes.

He penned: “She had been unable to keep anything down and had spent a lot of that day in or near a toilet, so we were just grateful that it was only the pyrotechnics that went off, or that fast spin out of the darkness could have been a very different surprise!”.

The routine earned thunderous applause from the crowd and a score of 33 out of a potential 40 points from the judging panel – Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse, Shirley Ballas and Anton Du Beke.

Craig declared the “poignant blackout moment” was “absolutely spectacular” whilst head judge Shirley became tearful and, as she composed herself, told Chris: “You come out every week with your heart on your sleeve, and you give us 100%.”

He revealed that if medical science were to find a cure for his blindness one day, he would first look up some video clips from his time on Strictly: “I’ll certainly have to sit down with Dianne, to watch our dances and actually see what we were able to accomplish each week.”

Prior to his first appearance on this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, Tom Skinner revealed he had a two-week “fling” behind his wife Sinead’s back, just weeks after their wedding.

Thomas Skinner’s wife has revealed that after his affair, she kicked him out of their family home. He made headlines for all of the wrong reasons prior to his short stint on Strictly Come Dancing after admitting to having a “fling” behind his wife Sinead’s back, and now Tom‘s other half has revealed exactly what happened when he came clean about the affair to her.

One week before his first appearance on the BBC One show, The Apprentice star, 34, confessed to a “two-week fling” with a beauty clinic boss and said, “it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Speaking about her husband’s infidelity for the first time, Sinead admitted she kicked him out of the family home after being left devastated by the news. She explained: “When he first told me what had happened, I made him leave. I was devastated.

“I will never forget Thomas telling me. I remember thinking, ‘I never thought this would happen to me’. It was one of the worst days of my life. I only told one friend, nobody else.”

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Sinead added to The Sun: “But we eventually worked it out. I just knew how much I love him and I wanted to work it out. He made a mistake. It was a tough time. One of his friends had just died.”

She explained that the cheating was in the past for them and they are now “stronger than ever”. Despite his scandal, Sinead admits that the couple are stronger than ever and have gone on to welcome their twin daughters together. But it was his stint on Strictly which brought the cheating to light. “It has been hell,” she revealed.

The mum-of-three went on to explain that it’s been “horrendous” having to re-live that chapter all over again, especially since the pair had put it behind them in an effort to start again.

Back in September, the BBC star said that he had a two-week fling with Amy-Lucy Rourke, 35, and “it is the biggest mistake of my life.” He continued: “I met her in a pub. She was a single mum. We chatted on the phone, and she offered me some kind of cosmetic slimming treatments.”

He told The Sun: “It was nothing more than that. It was the one time; it was a mistake. I woke up feeling absolutely terrible about it. I felt so guilty. I told my wife. I let her down in that brief moment of madness where I wasn’t thinking, where I didn’t appreciate what I had. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

However, just days after he went public with the affair, Amy came forward and claimed he had told her she was the “love of his life” and the fling had actually been three months long.

She claimed to the Daily Mail: “We were originally friends, but with his sweet-talking and his lies, he made me believe we were in love. He would stand in the mirror with me and say, ‘Look, we’ll be Mr and Mrs Skinner’. That is actually traumatising to me.

“You don’t say that to someone when you’re already happily married. I fell in love with him, but Thomas is nothing but a liar and a cheat.” Thomas and Sinead first met at a bar in London in 2018 and got engaged two years later. The fling occurred shortly after their wedding in May 2022, when they were already parents to their son, now four years old.

The pair also now have identical twin daughters who are two years old. Tom and his Strictly partner Amy Dowden were the first to be eliminated from this year’s show after landing in the bottom two with Chris Robshaw and Nadiya Bychkova. All four judges unanimously decided to save Chris over Tom.

During his exit interview with Tess Daly, he gushed: “Thank you, Amy – sorry that we haven’t done too good, ’cause you’re a different class.

“I’ve never danced before and my stay was short, but Amy’s amazing. It’s been great fun and I’ve enjoyed it. I can’t really dance that well but I’ve had fun!”

Strictly Come Dancing continues on Sunday night at 7:15pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

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