I would conclude that she must have thought she could get through the dance without further pain or injury. I have no idea why you are assuming she is so arrogant, I've not seen particular evidence of that.

Had this been close to the semi finals I may have agreed with you but not at this stage. The pubilc should decide every week the dance off is a farce.

Oh no. some people state their opinions absolutely categorically as facts.

Beautifully clear, thank you.

I wonder if Brendan was given any advice with his choreography to prevent reinjury? I'm thinking of the moment in the training video where Anastacia is on the ground and he hauls her onto his hip by one arm. That might not have been a good move in the circs.

Maybe it would have been wise to treat her as an older person. She can perform. She's got loads of character and stage presence obviously. But in terms of athletic ability, it might have been better to treat her gently. Kind of wishing all over again that she'd been partnered with Gio who might not have done a one arm jerk lift from the ground. Though I'm speculating that is what caused the tear and it might not have been

As I said on another thread, that's what is sticking in a lot of people's craw.
If she said immediately after dancing that she had injured herself further and would be unable to compete in a dance-off, the producers could have withdrawn her and given her a bye. Melvin could have danced off against whoever was third bottom and nobody would have been any the wiser where Anastacia finished in the voting.
Why go through all the farce of standing there with the contestants being whittled down, one by one, and then say she was unable to compete.

wasn't the dance off brought in to stop the public from voting off all the 'good' dancers and keeping the likes of Christopher Parker and the soap actors and more popular people in?

I call it arrogance on her part that she knew how serious her injury was and decided to dance against the advice of doctors.

Yes and then we had a series where Gabby Logan was booted out almost immediately as her husband and Kate Garraway skated serenely on by...

I imagine that her body is probably a mass of scarring from various surgical procedures. Although I don't know the precise specifics of her mastectomy surgery, I gather she had likely breast reconstruction, using tissue from her upper back. It's very major surgery involving a lot of tissue.

Maybe Brendan's choreography did not allow for the limitations of her movement. I would not blame him for that. It is perhaps a conversation which did not take place between them and if she otherwise has fairly normal function, perhaps she herself did not realise just how much of a stretch/twist certain combinations of movements would cause. I guess it only became apparent after the damage was done.

You have got to love the GBP, can never predict what they will do or who they will vote for they want to be entertained the dance competition is secondary until the later stages of the show.

I've noticed! I am not referring to Rhumba.


I'm not sure that is any fairer than using the public vote. Or they could have let them both through until next week and then done a double elimination. I think the results show happens pretty soon after the main show and maybe she hadn't thought she would be in the DO or hadn't had the chance to be seen to my a doctor.

And gave us the 2 most bad tempered series of all time. How it made it to series 8 remains a mystery!

Oh no, I didn't mean it as a criticism of Brendan, more as a gap where he could possibly have been guided better, where they both could. It must have come out of the blue. This is someone who can do the sideways splits, whatever that's called, and she looks amazing. She doesn't seem fragile! Two years after surgery to suffer such an injury -- I guess neither knew enough to expect that

ETA I'm pretty sure she mentioned scarring on her back

No, I didn't think you did. I was speaking for myself there.

I think it's all just a very sad situation. I feel very sorry for everyone involved and I think it's a huge pity that Anastacia is being given a hard time about it. It was an accidental injury and accidental injuries can happen to anyone at any time in such a contest - whether they have a pre-existing condition/disability/impairment or not.

It's just a pity that instead of being supported for being determined to perform in spite of her injury (in that good old showbiz tradition ), she is instead being pilloried by an apparently increasingly mean-spirited viewing public.

Except she isn't a big star. Never heard of here before Strictly.

The same people who voted John Sergeant in every week.

This ^^^^. The powers made the decision to go on the public vote and while I don't think that is particularly unfair they could have just as easily decided to eliminate two contestants next week instead. Hardly Anastacia's fault.

I'm not particularly convinced by the "it's all because the Beeb don't want to lose Anastacia" conspiracy theory. There are other options which would have worked much better from that point of view:

- give her a bye before the show even starts. Then she's guaranteed a place next week

- let her do the dance off. If the Beeb are that desperate to keep her in, the judges will put her through and Melvin will go home.

Either way, 'social media' would be full of the same kind of criticism that we're seeing now.

Instead, the Beeb put the red spotlight on the two couples who had received the two lowest combined votes. They sent home the couple who had received the very lowest combined vote.

Imagine that.

They sent home the couple who had least convinced the judges and the public.

I wonder how long it took them to work out a conspiracy of that magnitude?

I can't add anything to that... You sum the situation up perfectly for me

^^^^ This. Thank you so much for expressing it so well!

Thank you both for these kind words.

... and on that bombshell... I'm off to bed! Goodnight folks!

I 100% agree with you! In many ways the producers etc. are VERY lucky its Melvin who was in the bottom 2. Just imagine for a moment it was Laura, or Will, or Judge Rinder. How would people then feel at them being booted off without following the proper rules of the show?

Because that's not how the programme is supposed to work maybe?

We vote to keep people out of the dance-off, which once they are in, leaves them exposed to a final decision by the judges.

If you scroll back up to the top of my post, you'll see that I said:

"I'm not particularly convinced by the "it's all because the Beeb don't want to lose Anastacia" conspiracy theory".

The rest of it - including the part you have quoted - flowed from that starting point.

As for the dance-off, not only am I unfazed by the fact that it was dispensed with on this occasion, I would actually prefer that 'Head Judge Len Goodman' did not have "the casting vote".

Give him the same vote as the other judges, and if it's a split decision the couple with the lowest combined vote goes.

Now the bit about Len and his casting vote, I do certainly agree with.

The problem is they've made these rules and suddenly one week don't follow them. I'm not totally convinced that there even was a contingency plan for something like this happened, they probably made it up as it has been said elsewhere, the BBC site basically states they can do as they like when unusual circumstances arise.

I can't see that giving her a bye before the show had started would have caused any media uproar, it's happened before.
The worst possible option was carrying on with the results section in the usual manner with everyone expecting a dance-off and then Anastacia declaring herself unfit to continue at the very last minute.
Yes, they quickly tried to save the situation by saying it will revert to the public vote to decide. But it was very late in coming and didn't seem fair on Melvin.

I think the public would complain far more if a woman who was raising money for cancer awareness was forced off the show because the producers demanded she danced with a mastectomy injury.