Why Ellie on Strictly is life cha-cha-changing

Nikita Kuzmin and Ellie Simmonds dance the cha-cha-cha on Srtictly.

All Ellie Simmonds was thinking about at 8.30pm on Saturday night was the footwork in her cha, cha, cha and how to keep it “sassy”.

From my sofa, all I was thinking, watching her nail her first Strictly dance, was: “this performance is going to make my daughter’s life so much better”.

Reader, I cried.

Like Ellie, my daughter has dwarfism. So it meant the world to see this beautiful, accomplished, 27-year-old woman on the biggest show on TV, strutting her stuff in a wicked, Beyonce-worthy, gold-sequinned frock.

Visibility is everything. Seeing people who are supposedly “different” on TV alongside non-disabled peers leads to greater understanding of their lives. The Strictly format allows viewers to get to know contestants, to see them out of their comfort zone competing, thriving and in Tony Adams’ case, failing alongside each other.

Greater understanding results in increased inclusion, more job opportunities, less bullying, more thought about how we can make life better for disabled people.

We know Ellie from her two gold, one sliver and one bronze swimming medals in the 2012 London Paralympics. Recently she’s branched out into TV presenting. Her documentary A World Without Dwarfism?, about new growth drug Vosoritide, was incredibly powerful.

But Strictly is a whole new ballroom game. Saturday’s show attracted 7.2 million viewers, most of whom will never have met someone with dwarfism. And some who might have thought it was OK to joke about people with dwarfism.

Representation in the media is improving. Simon Minty is brilliantly funny on Googlebox, he happens to have short stature. Fabulous CBeebies presenter George Webster is the first to have Down’s Syndrome. And of course Rose Ayling-Ellis smashed Strictly last year, proud of being Deaf. But we still have a long way to go, despite the fact government figures show 10 per cent of Brits are disabled.

Inspired by my daughter, I set up Cause Communications to work with charities and help in the fight for greater visibility. We are proud to work on campaigns with the Disabled Children’s Partnership, a coalition of 100 charities, fighting for better funding and support for families.

We have produced a Common Sense Style Guide about language used in the media for all minority groups for NewsUK, the biggest news publishers in Britain.

And we help support incredible charities like Sibs UK and the awesome Little People UK. LPUK was started by actor/presenters Sammy and Warwick Davies and works hard to represent and support families with children and adults with short stature.

A mate of mine was lucky enough to be in the Strictly audience. I asked her to pass on my thanks to Ellie for changing my daughter’s life. She did, Ellie replied wishing us love. Result!

My daughter’s form of dwarfism means she also has severe learning disabilities, otherwise I would have asked her to write this. Instead I’m just going to quote another Ellie, one of many disabled people on twitter, who were tweeting with sheer joy on Saturday night:

“Ellie Simmonds dancing on strictly is making me so emotional. i genuinely never thought i’d see someone with the same condition as me on a show like this … and she’s not just on the show she’s cool and sexy and loving it all.”