Not really. It was 2 years ago or something anyway, so no big deal.

Why did the beeb ask her to do it if they think she has an unfair advantage?

Seems silly to ban her for a week.

Its still an unfair advantage.

I knew that Kara would be the first to get 'previous dance experience' flung at her ...

If people want to get their knickers in a twist over this one case, fine - but the reality is that if what Kara did counts as having 'an unfair advantage', then so do Felicity, Scott, Patsy, Jimi and Tina. All professionally trained actors learn basic dance steps. Just ask Tom, Cherie, Ricky, Ali, Letitia, Natalie, Patsy ... I could go on, but you get my drift.

And Michelle will have had extensive experience of working with choreographers, as did Emma and Rachel.

So unless all actors and singers are banned from appearing on Strictly - which I can't see happening any time soon - this whole argument is completely pointless. End of!

It was in the Southend Echo as well (before the Mail I might add).

I doubt it will help her at all really. You could claim that most of the contestants have an "unfair advantage" in some way. It happens every year and it's now very, very tedious.

I agree with Servalan.

You may consider this to be tedious but there is no doubt it will help her to progress further on the show, as the newspapers have already pointed out.

Uh, it might help her in Samba week? The dance she did for Sport Relief wasn't even that complex, from what I can remember she spent a lot of the time doing stupid poses/walks and being thrown/spun around the floor.

Only if the public embraces her and don't count her training as a strike against voting for her. Now that there is no dance off it's anyone's game.

Sometimes having the ringer status can work against a celeb in the voting world.

You do make some very valid points.

I watched it on Youtube recently and I wasn't impressed. I didn't like the routine and her dancing wasn't all that great. It was just a lot of walking around really. Michelle has a lot more experience than Kara, albeit not ballroom experience. I hope Michelle is really good though, as I don't want the show to be full of mediocre/crap dancers.

And since when were 'the newspapers' in any way a credible source of information where Strictly is concerned? If they were right, then Pamela Anderson would be competing this year ...

With the greatest respect, qwertyqueen is quite right: this argument really is tedious. It's done to death every year and the only people who get anything out of it are the tabloid journalists who want to attack Strictly as part of a wider anti-BBC campaign.

You seem to be under the impression that Strictly is a dance competition where the most technically adept flourish and the less skilled don't. How far from the truth is that?!

The judges may look for technical ability but what the public look for are contestants with personalities they can engage with - who can bring something of themselves onto the dancefloor. We have seen countless times that celebs who just aren't liked - for whatever reason, and however good or bad they may be technically - struggle to survive. It's going to be a helluva lot tougher this year, too, now that the dance-off has (quite rightly ) been junked.

Of course Kara has to impress the judges - as do all the contestants - but if the public don't take to her, then she's toast.

We've seen only a little of Kara so far but, to me, she came across as quite likeable. But it's very early days ...

Michelle playing a leading part in Chicago will also have had extensive dance training so why is she not penalised also?

She gets my vote for ringer! I don't really get this Kara thing, though...one week learning one dance for a one-off thing? Oh well.

Kara replied to me on twitter and confirmed that she definitely isn't allowed to train this week.

A bit OTT IMO.

Ridiculous and OTT by the BBC to single out one person. If they're going to go down this route they should also have penalised Matt and Michelle.

I'm really shocked that that is true. Its silly.

It's a perfectly sensible PR move to counter the RINGER backlash. And let's face it they've got enough of those amongst the front-runners as it is (possibly more once people have done the requisite digging through the actors backgrounds). This way, Kara's either sensibly been brought down to everybody's level or she's the victim of BBC over-reaction. Either way, no RINGER backlash, and a helping hand for one of the girls they probably want to win.

I was just going to say that Michelle would have done a fair bit of dance training for Chicago .. plus I also seemed to remember Matt doing some dance training while on Blue Peter ... I also seem to recall him taking part in some performannc of "The Old Bamboo" in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which ivolved a lot of pretty complicated choreography so he's no slouch when it comes to picking up routines and knowing various dance steps

either way, like has been said, most actors/singers/media people have had some sort of dance/movement training experience a some time or other .. even Peter Shilton has said something about having some sort of dance lessons to help with his goal keeping .... plus Paul Daniels is married to Debbie McGee who's a professional dancer so she could hav been giving his "lessons" for years . lol

In a way it's good that there are some decent dancers so that it's not just a case of watching a load of pretty poor performances so as long as it's entertaining, most people tend to vote on personality or who they fancy anyway

I ask this aswell, or is it cos Kara won?

And after seeing Matt in his comp i think he should've had to wait a week aswell.