If Alexandra Burke wins this year’s Strictly, it’s fair to say she’ll have triumphed in the face of adversity.
Since the series started, the former X Factor winner, 29, has had to deal with a flood of negativity, with reports claiming that she’s been involved in feuds with other contestants and suffered backstage meltdowns.
And now, she’s revealed that she suffered another major setback as she prepared for last weekend’s crucial quarter-finals with her professional partner Gorka Marquez.
Appearing on last night’s It Takes Two, the singer explained that she suffered an injury prior to hitting the dancefloor, which left her in AGONY.
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On Saturday evening, Alex and Gorka performed a brilliant Charleston to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which resulted in them finishing joint top of the leaderboard.
And although they surprisingly ended up in the dance-off for the second week running, they managed to fend off the challenge of Davood Ghadami and Nadiya Bychkova to book their place in the semi-finals.
But appearing next to Gorka on the sofa, Alex told presenter Zoe Ball that she’d had to battle through the pain barrier to squeeze through to the next stage.
She explained: “Just before we went on for the actual show, I injured my left hip, so I was in excruciating pain throughout the dance – and then in the dance-off as well.
“I thought to myself: ‘I need to just go for it, no matter what the pain.'”
At that point, Zoe beamed: “You’re amazing!” and instigated a round of applause for her brave guest.
Alex admitted to being surprised that she and Gorka had ended up in the bottom two after being so pleased with their performance on Saturday.
She said: “I just felt like we’d had such a great week and such a great performance – it felt like we did. We got great, encouraging comments.
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“It’s a scary place to be. I think at this point in the show, everyone wants to make it to the next step. And I was really frightened.
“You know how you feel like you’ve not done your partner proud? That’s what I felt like. I always want to do Gorka proud.”
However, Gorka had nothing but positive words for his dance partner. The Spanish star told Zoe: “She’s the one who picks ME up, because she’s such a strong woman.
“I was like: ‘OK, whatever.’ But she was so positive, saying: ‘Come on, let’s do it!'”
Just be careful of that injury, Alex – it’s the semi-finals this weekend!