Were you expecting to see them having a good snigger at her misfortune?

No I was merely having a side-swipe at the increasing speculation that there was nowt wrong with her and that's why no one seemed to care backstage.

Unless the dressmakers post on here that is?

I agree. There are just some things that aren't funny. Cancer is one of them.

Comedy falling down the stairs, always!

After itt tonight I think I have sussed it. It was becaue others were also carrying injury and not making mountains out of molehills. Katya probably due to knowing what Phil went through a few weeks ago, Ricky as he was carrying a hamstring injury and maybe Chris was too - they did say 'others'. It was probably no more sinister than that.

Gotta admire your tenacity.......! Oh, and it's temperament.

On this and other threads people found the 'cancer' reporting ridiculous and OTT. The woman had blood tests which would have detected cancer - and probably rabies and scurvy and mad cow disease too. It was disgracefully speculative reporting.

Some people think Lailla leaked the story.
Some people think it was just shoddy reporting (I'm in that camp), trying to whip up some kind of hysterical sympathy or sympathetic hysteria.

People on this thread have reflected those views. Not one person has said that cancer is funny.

Just to throw my penny's worth in - I sprained my ankle by tripping down a step, went to to the doctors and hospital for x-ray and not once was I told to keep off it or elevate it or strap it - nothing. It was really painful but I could walk on it though limping - stupidly put heels on a few days later and OMG the pain was awful. I have no reason to doubt Laila and I think she was in lots of pain and I commend her for trying. I understand why she would have wanted to dance in heels as it would have helped her but then again, I wonder if she would have been able to dance more (even if not as well) if she had had flats on. I think her tears were genuine, and I think it was a lot of disappointment that she couldn't continue as well as tears of pain. I mean why go to all the trouble of faking something like that for a dance show? To me, that would be pointless....

Those who have had foot injuries realise that whereas the bones and muscles may well be useable, pain and alarm signals from the nerves will inhibit the sufferer causing her to instinctively not put weight on the bad foot.

The good foot will lead, the bad foot will follow. Movement of the two feet will be asymmetric, i.e. showing an undisguisable limp. So far as I know from personal experience it is not possible to blot out pain signals or reflex response, unless the sufferer is injected with heavy-duty painkillers, in which case nature's fire alarm is switched off, and the injury ceases to be a factor in the short term.

I have no doubt her tears were genuine, and who wouldn't be shocked and saddened? But there were two different pains.

You are right, no one said cancer is funny.

However, at the start of this thread cancer was used in an allegedly humorous and blasé way - that's what people disagreed with. What happened in the press is irrelevant. Mentioning cancer in the way it was on here is tasteless and clearly offensive to some people including me.

I'm glad you mentioned this - I wondered if it was just me. I thought the other celebs were very restless behind Claudia throughout this section, usually they remain fairly motionless but it seemed to me that there was a lot of something going on.

Regarding the injury, I think it is unfortunate that on ITT she made a joke about her options earlier in the week - dance the rumba, leave the country, fall down stairs (as I remember it). Somehow that sowed a seed of doubt in my mind that I find hard to ignore.

If she doesn't like dancing with Anton, then surely a rubbish rumba (without the injury) would probably have put them in the dance off and then out of the show, which surely would have been her desired result?

To others it is offensive for journalists to make up a cancer scare to spice up a story about someone having routine tests about lack of energy. I think it is that that was being mocked rather than cancer itself.

It's a shame this has been raised again in this thread, as it seemed to die off.

I agree with your first sentence, but I definitely don't agree with your second sentence. We are all entitled to our opinions and I've made mine clear. I don't think the subject of cancer should be used in a humorous or blasé manner under any circumstances.

I mentioned this at the beginning of the thread that it would come back to haunt her (fair play I meant it as a joke).

I think the problem there is that they struggle to make VT's for Laila and Anton. About the only thing they can do now is take the michael out of their Latin as anything else might be interpreted the wrong way.

They don't really have a 'thing' do they? No 'yeah baby' or 'English for Italians', no 'showmance', no chest to get out at every possibly turn. All they have is a lot of adverse publicity which is the elephant in the training room with these two now!

Maybe Natalie Lowe pushed her down some stairs after placing a trip wire across the dance floor during dress rehearsals to knobble Jade. Unfortunately stamping hard on Ali's toe in the Tesspit didnt manage to get rid of her as she was saved in the dance off so she is still working on that one.....Natalie was last seen talking to herself on the train to training in Liverpool muttering to herself 'by hook or by crook I WILL win this thing' and looking into a mirror chanting 'mirror mirro on the wall who IS the best dancer of them all' and a voice saying 'You are ofcourse my dear but Hollins is more popular'

Even when it is making fun of people who use cancer in a blasé manner? Because then the person is being blasé about being blasé about cancer...

Laughed out loud <thanks>

I've been thinking about this over the past few days and I can't see Leila lying about the injury.

I read somewhere that she wouldn't have kept her Ugg boots on while going to the hospital, it would have kept her ankle supported (mind you I have had to throw my Ugg boots away after slipping over in Birmingham last week, they can be really slippy), she was trying to dance on 3" heels with all of her weight on her ankle, in a dance where the twisting and turning puts even more pressure on her ankle, so cut her a little slack. I've sprained my ankle a lot in the past and tore my ankle ligaments and I couldn't even walk properly, or get a shoe on let alone get into 3" heels and try and dance a Rhumba, I still suffer now after years of spraining ankles so it's not as insignificant as people think.

I am not a great fan of hers, find her a little moany but think she is getting a lot of bad press here, along with Jade who I hope will be ok and able to continue her athletics career.

I think the problem with the Ugg boots is not that she "kept them on" but that she actually "put" them on.

Before she was wearing them on the way to the hospital we saw her with an ice pack on a bare foot. Then she pulled on a pair of boots to go to hospital knowing full well that they would have to be pulled of again in order to be examined.

If she is supposed to have a low pain where was it when she was causing unnecessary jarring with the boots? She could have just put a sock over her toes to keep them warm, you often see shoeless people in emergency wards.

I think the problem is we're all reading too much into everything.

We're also assuming that everyone in the world has our sense of logic, maybe Laila doesn't, maybe she's on commission from Ugg to product place their boots? Who knows? If only Birdseye had of got in there too it would have been a bag of petit pois rather than an icepack...

I think it was a combined sum of events that led her to meltdown mid-dance. Pain, shock, embarrassment, maybe she did forget her moves even...I wouldn't really hold the latter against her given the day she'd had!

As you say, we're all entitled to our opinions. Others disagree with you, and do find cancer a perfectly acceptable subject for humour - as considerable research among cancer patients (among others) has shown.

But it's not really about logic. With a badly sprained ankle and a low pain threshold, shouldn't the mere act of pulling on the boots have increased her pain?

Maybe logic was the wrong word, I was just suggesting maybe she wasn't thinking clearly at the time or didn't want to go to hospital in one boot...who knows what goes through people's heads!

But those would be cancer patients with a sense of humour. There are also moany old farts with cancer too - as there are in any walk of life.

Nothing to do with the severity of her injury - but I thought the daftest thing was to put on the boot and then have the ice pack on the outside of it ... which is about as much good as a chocolate fireguard.

Doing that, all you really get is a soggy Ugg and a cold hand.

If assigned to dance the Twist,
gallant Anton must ask for a free pass.