I think Ola is still happy with the role of being a pro on Strictly. Her unhappiness toward the end of last year was a one-off situation.
Being a pro on Strictly is something she is good at. Winning with the worst dancer ever to win Strictly is a bit of an achievement - Chris did have the personality though and they did form a very charismatic team.

I'd agree with backstageone that of the Jordans, Ola is not the problem, although agreeing to try some skiing training before Strictly ended was a foray into James's 100%.

I agree with this all. James' twitter rants about Strictly, about other pros, and pros who have left the show have been out of line, for him to now be the biggest cheerleader for Ola to return.

Other pros manage to keep it nice, why not the Jordans?

She always seems to come back despite rumours SCD will let her go. Hopefully it's her last year and give the younger dancers more chance to shine..

According to Robin, on the day she had her skiing accident, Ola missed a rehearsal and got James to call in sick for her. That, plus the fact she is married to the ghost at the feast, makes her return unlikely.

I know someone who knows several celebs that have appeared on Strictly (because she works on the show that is their day job). Apparently Gordana is a very, ahem, determined person. To be fair she has helped out Trent a lot with his career in the past so maybe it is his turn to go into bat for her.

I agree - this reeks of JJ trying to drum up a bit of excitement around Ola's recovery as a leveraging tool to negotiate a new contract. Announcements on Twitter are his preferred method of doing this.

There was a rumoured tour in collaboration with Arlene (didn't happen), a rumoured reality show (didn't happen), The Jump didn't come off because of the accident ... The Jordans are in danger of dropping out of the public eye altogether, hence the need to announce that they've got so much coming up

Still, they can always do another classy 'oooh,look at me undercrackers' calendar to bolster the coffers, eh?

Of course, according to JJ, misery is the perpetual state of ALL of the Strictly pros ALL of the time, and he's the only one man enough to 'tell it like it is'.

The younger dancers are Aliona, Joanne, Janette - then Ola.

The fact that remains that James tweeted last year that the show itself deliberately planted stories in the press that made her out to be a bitch and a bully and which had her in floods of tears. Why on earth would she want to go back to that, if that's what they think happened?

As well as his insistence that the pros are treated like cack, so much so that poor ickle Artem had to run all the way to America under cover of a fake 'can't get a visa story' to get away from the horridness.


Still, he'll happily pimp her out in her pants to make a buck or two, so what's a bit of light-hearted libel when there's a cheque to be cashed?

But the BBC handles personality all the time, just look at the whole saga with Jeremy Clarkson! He insulted the BBC on almost every series he did of Top Gear, and it took him assaulting somebody to get dropped, because he brought media attention, viewers, and, by extension, money to the BBC. In principle, the whole palaver with OIa does EXACTLY the same for Strictly.

Also, let's be honest, 90% of the attacks on the BBC are by James. Ola has pretty much only attacked one section of the show, the judges, saying that apart from Len none of them are qualified ballroom judges, and the panel should be made up of ex pros instead. And a pros vs Judges spat is always good for television. Brendan, Aliona, Kristina and Anton have all had several pops in the past, and of course it generates headlines which is good for the Saturday tea-time "drama". I wouldn't be surprised to see Ola go, since the likes of Gordana are waiting in the wings, but equally, if she stayed, I'm sure a lot of people would be happy with that!

I know the BBC handles has to handle personalities which is why I speculated about Ola having crossed the line into giving them the type of publicity which imo they wouldn't be happy with.

I'm actually not bothered what exactly her and James issues are with the producers - all I know is that when I watch strictly I want to watch dancers that are happy to be there and grateful for the opportunity that many dancers would give their right arm for. To me throwing a sickie, just so you can train for another risky reality show does not indicate to me that someone is happy with their job.

BIB this is where the line may have been crossed - this caused problems for the producers and they do not like having to deal with things like that.

Anyone who threw a sickie from their work to - for example- go for a job interview with another company - risks getting fired. This situation is exactly the same as for everyone else in that situation

I'm reasonably happy to see that Ola "may" return to Strictly- if indeed she is invited back. However i really wish JJ would crawl back under the stone he came out of and stay there, his time on Striclty is done with, he needs to go away now imo.

What Ola sees it this James Beefcake I don't know? she must have a similar personality but publicly displays a nicer softer image due to her cute looks.

must????

Maybe that he's a rough, crude, thick, abrasive, nice guy who loves her?

What I see is a sweet person who I give extra credit to for having a happy marriage with James - who she loves.

Re the posts about James allegedly phoning in with a sickie when Ola missed the pro rehearsal.......

Any of you thought that she might have gone to ski-ing practice in the morning and got injured before the rehearsal in the afternoon? If that is what happened, James was justified phoning in telling them she was sick/ had an accident etc... remember that the video where Robin was gossiping about the incident was pulled very quickly, so maybe there was more to it than he thought!

its also clear that there was a bit of a personality clash between Steve and Ola - the reaction of her former partners to the allegations says more about Steve and a lack of backbone than it does about her. None of the others (Kenny Logan, Ashley taylor Dawson, Chris Hollins) etc seem to have had any problem with her and her teaching, and as well as getting Chris to the win, she (like james) has done wonders with some partners who * ahm* weren't actually much good!

I agree with you - I would be very surprised to see her back tbh but stranger things have happened

And yet Andrew Castle appeared to be on Steve's side, so maybe not 'none of the others'. I should think most of the pros have some partners they didn't get on with - the same teaching style doesn't suit everyone and I think both male and female contestants and pros should be able to raise issues without being accused of having no backbone or being told to 'man up'. If a female contestant accused a male pro of bullying I expect the reaction would be very different. Do you think Ola 'lacks backbone' because she accused Karen of bullying her when all the other pros seem to have no problem with Karen?

Ah, I wish we could get away from things like 'lack of backbone' if a pupil has problems with a tutor. People are different and learn in different ways. By and large the Strictly Pairing Elves and Sorting Hat do a pretty good job of matching celebs with pros but there are bound to be glitches - which probably aren't going to come to light until training actually starts.

It could be flipped the other way, and be said that as Ola was the one being paid to teach, if it was apparent the methods she used were not working and causing her celeb to be uncomfortable then she should be the one to change how she approached things.

maybe but at the end of the day she was under a BBC contract and shouldnt have been signing up to a rival programme

I agree with you except for the bit about Andrew Castle. All I saw was Andrew saying that he had sent a message to Steve.

From my memory at the time, Andrew seemed to have a lot of respect for Ola. I remember seeing some video indicating that. I'll have a look for it.

Fair enough I probably misinterpreted something I read about Andrew. I just think that even if all Ola's other partners loved her, Steve shouldn't be accused of having no backbone because he found her difficult to work with. Sometimes people just don't get on, for whatever reason. It's just a shame the story was leaked, which probably made it impossible for them to move on from whatever the issue was in the way they perhaps could have done if it had been dealt with privately.

I think with one or two notable exceptions coughlulucogh the celebs all respect the pros. The couples don't have to be BFF just work together for as long as they are in the show.

I totally agree. It may have been just a case of needing to talk things out to an understanding.

I couldn't find the video of Andrew saying that what mattered to him was not what the judges thought, but what Ola thought.

This is an instance where Ola was tough with Andrew.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...-fall-out.html

Especially considering the risk of injury. It's not like it was the first series of The Jump, after all. Given that four people had to withdraw from the first series due to injury, wouldn't Ola have been aware of the danger?