No more so than those who have accused her of playing on her injury to gain an unfair advantage.

Glad we havent lost our sense of humour I was betting on a crutch covered in sparkles but a neck brace is good.

Yes. Which is why I'm beginning to hope she doesn't dance. I mean, I hope that she can on a purely selfish level, but I don't think she'll get a good response if she does, unfortunately.

I think she'll get a good reception from the vast majority, and there will always be a few who will moan whatever she does, so don't let a few morons make you hope that she doesn't dance.

I think she will dance, even if it's only a small part of the routine, and she will be voted through, so she will have another week to recover more ,hopefully.

I'm really not sure about the arguments of the fairness on the other couples other than to say if it were my favourite couple in the same situation, i would want them to be treated with the same compassion.


It will then be nice to hopefully barring any more injuries to get back to it being a level playing field and the public primarily voting on the dancing merits.

There's no need to resort to personal abuse. We are all entitled to an opinion. I just cannot see why you should think that this could be spun out until the last minute and I've given my reasons. You obviously think that is O.K.

Quite possibly not on here, though I doubt that the vast majority of the 10 million viewers - or whatever it is - have been the following the minutiae of the fall out from her injury.

However, I also hope she won't carry on. Her reputation and integrity have already been sullied quite enough, albeit by a mere handful of posters on this forum.

I am quite sure she won't be swayed by a "handful of posters on this forum".

I would love to see her dance her Tango as, if she is able to dance it, there is a chance it could be up there with the very best.

Ian and Zoe were the best in my opinion on Strictly and Mel B and Maksim Chmerkovskiy were outstanding on Dancing with the Stars. Any opportunity to see a dance which comes close to either of those and I would not want to miss it.

I was talking about people who will complain no matter what. They will say that she was faking it if she dances, and that she was wasting people's time if she doesn't. I don't think that calling such people morons is personal abuse (particularly as I have mentioned no specific person a moron), just calling a spade a spade.

To be honest, I haven't actually seen you or anyone give a good reason why a decision needs to have already been made. It all just seemd to be an argument based on cynicism rather than logic. Why force her to pull out before today and then find she could have danced?

I accept that there's just no way to tell how she's going to feel, and I'm sure there's no rules that the BBC/Jade has to make a decision before she's due, but we'll have to disagree on whether this is a mess or not. I think it is.

We may not need to know in advance, but I'm sure the uncertainty isn't good for the costume makers, stage-managers, orchestra etc let alone Jade or Ian who said themselves that it's the not knowing that's adding to the stress. If she is fit enough to dance on Friday - what will she dance? And the lack of mental preparation, let alone the lack of training for the Rumba or refresher of her Tango is going to come into play. Edited to add: They may have it at the back of their minds that they might dance, but that's nothing to getting yourself in the zone, so to speak.

It just seems unnecessarily last minute, which doesn't really help anyone, including Jade and Ian.


Unfortunately there's always going to be posters who dislike a couple for whatever reason and will use any attack. But I think the majority of posters are most frustrated with the situation than with Jade.

I don't think the uncertainty has to make things difficult. All you have to do is make a decision on what you will do if she does dance, prepare for that as normal, and then if she doesn't dance you just shelve what you had planned.

It may be last minute, but that doesn't mean "unnecessarily last minute". Quite commonly in football or cricket the final team will not be announced until a few minutes before the game as they're waiting on a particular injury. It is quite possible that however she feels right now it will be different by 7pm this evening.

Yes, the BBC could have chosen to tell us which dance they would be performing but they have clearly chosen not to and may well have told Jade not to comment on it.

As far as I know we do not know for certain whether she has done any practice or not, do we? There was obviously no training footage, but we don't even know how easily she can take weight on her leg.

I'd love her to dance but I don't think she should.

Perhaps she could give her leg a chance to heal & do the tango in the Christmas special.

My reason is based on the following facts:

1. They knew the extent of the injury as soon as they had the result of the scan.
2. Jade needed to rest for 3 days.
3. Claudia said that if Jade danced this week she would be dancing the rhumba. This is in accordance with the rules of the competition.
4. Jade said on her website that she hoped to dance the tango.
5. As far as we know they have not trained this week. Ian is a good teacher so I'm sure Jade already knows the basic rhumba steps but will not have prepared a routine. If she does dance it is almost certain to be the tango as she already has a costume for this.
6. Although we didn't get to see the tango, Jade got the same result as she would have done at the top of the leaderboard.
She can always choose to dance it later.

Now for opinion. My opinion is that it is unfair to other competitors to bend the rules to accommodate Jade and, yes, it did lower my regard for her that she seemed to expect this.

Her own physio stipulated 5 days' rest. Jade herself said - at the beginning of this week - that that would give them one day to learn a dance, rather than the usual 6 days. From that it was construed that she was thus out of commission until Friday at the earliest. Given that the BBC physio is at loggerheads with her own guy, and will not give Jade the go ahead to dance, it seems highly unlikely that she's had any practice at all.

As with Laila last week?
If it's Ricky/Ali/Chris in the DO then there will be cries of 'unfair', I'm not so sure about the others though.
That's what's unfair imo - Jade is just a piece of property for the duration of the series - none of this is her fault.

She wants to dance - can the BBC force her not to as per her contract any more than force her to dance if she was unsure of her fitness (on the advice of her physios)?

It's yet another loophole, until now not considered by the producers.

One definite thing, I don't think we'll see any more currently active athletes competing in SCD after this series.

She didn't expect this, she just said it was an option that they were exploring if she was ready to dance on Saturday but hadn't had time to practise.

I imagine if she hadn't done this there would be people asking why didn't her and Ian ask if they could do the tango instead of the rumba, why did no one think of this!

1. They knew the extent of the injury at that point, but rates of healing can differ massively, which is why you see sportsmen and women estimate when they might be fit again, but often have to leave decisions to the last minute, as until then it is guesswork.

2. What does that matter?

Points 3 to 6 are all about whether she should be made to dance the Tango or the Rumba. It's a legitimate argument, but separate to this argument over whether a decision should already be made.

When you consider how unpopular two person finals are it's not surprising that they're leaving it to the last minute as surely the easier way for them to keep it a three person is by keeping all current non-elminated contestants in the competition.

Who says any rules are being bent? Since this has not happened before, there probably are no rules. Whatever the BBC decides, so long as it is consistent with how they would treat any other similar case in this series, then it seems perfectly reasonable.

When did she "seem to expect this"? Given that she probably always felt the chance of dancing before Friday or today was very slim, you can hardly blame her for encouraging the BBC to let her dance the Tango. In her position, I'd certainly do the same.

She's human, why treat her like some god (or godess) who you should lower your regard for the moment they appear human?

How long she needed to rest is relevant if she is to train for the rhumba. My argument is that if she were going to do that dance a decision would already have had to be made.

Your ideas as to what is fair are obviously different to mine. I'm certainly not treating her like a god or goddess.

Whatever the BBC physio says, Jade can't be prevented from dancing if she takes responsibility for it in writing.

She'll have to do the dress rehearsal for her dance, and possibly one more before that to test out the knee. So we will either see Jade taking the floor in her Tango costume, knowing that she's got every chance of completing the dance, or we'll get a VT and an announcement essentially just like last week's.

I do hope I'm wrong, but I'm betting on the latter outcome. I think that last night's tease on ITT was quite simply required by the BBC to get the maximum audience for tonight's show.

No it wouldn't. They could have told which dance she had to do last Saturday and still given her the week to decide whether she was able to dance.

But you are. She simply hopes she would be allowed to dance her Tango and for that, and that alone, you lower your regard for her.

I hope you always achieve your own lofty standards.