Strictly Come Dancing star Tasha Ghouri's tearful breakdown over cruel remarks and best comeback

Former Love Island contestant Tasha Ghouri, 26, was targeted by cruel trolls after she appeared on the ITV reality show. The now-Strictly contestant responded in the best possible way

Tasha Ghouri is one of the favourites to win Strictly Come Dancing, typically finishing top of the leader board last week with her professional partner Aljaz Skorjanec.

JB Gill and Lauren Oakley also scored 37, the highest scores in the competition so far, sending both couples through in style to the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. Tasha, 26, first became well known after her appearance in Love Island in 2022.

She even found love on the show, finishing fourth with her "future husband" Andrew Le Page, who she is now renovating a house with. But becoming famous wasn't all positive - on last weekend's Strictly, Tasha spoke of cruel online trolls who had made fun of her disability.

The reality star was born deaf and uses a cochlear implant, prompting mean social media users to make videos about the way she speaks.

Tasha, from North Yorkshire, was so affected by the abuse she received after Love Island that she felt she had let down "the whole deaf community". "When I left the show, I remember my dad sat me down and he looked at me straight and said: 'Tash, there is a lot of horrific stuff that was written about you, especially on social media,'" she said. "There are videos made about my voice and the way I speak, it became a trend at one point."

The Strictly contestant reached rock bottom but vowed not to let the trolls win and today, she has 2.2 million followers across her social media platforms. "I'm going to use my platform and educate people," she said.

After her stint on Love Island as the first deaf contestant, Tasha became a viral sensation on TikTok for her Get Ready With Me video which saw millions watched her remove her cochlear implant and speak with her deaf accent. She has written a romance novel too, Hits Different, featuring a main character with hearing loss.

"Reading all of your reviews honestly has me beaming side to side," she wrote on Instagram. "Never in a million years did I think I would co-author a romance novel with a main character who is deaf and wears a cochlear implant.

Tasha's time on the dance contestant comes three years after Rose Ayling-Ellis became Strictly's deaf contestant and went onto lift the Glitterball Trophy. She describes Strictly as a "dream come true" and her incredible performances so far mean she could follow in Rose's footsteps.

The talented performer took up ballet as a youngster and later trained in commercial street style, going onto work as a freelance dancer. But she insists: "Commercial dance is very different to ballroom dance and Latin, I'm still having to strip down and relearn, even walking in cha cha step is weird to me."