Angela Rippon needed an emergency medic when she slashed her leg with her skate on 'Strictly Come Dancing'.
Angela Rippon suffered a painful injury which endangered her Strictly performance
The presenter, 79, was practising some of her choreography with her professional partner Kai Widdrington, 28, five minutes before showing her moves to the judges when her foot got caught on a sticky patch on the floor.
She told The Daily Telegraph about ending up needing emergency treatment: "When I looked down, my leg was bleeding from a cut on my right shin. The razor-sharp edge of my high-heeled dance shoe had sliced off a bit of flesh while I was doing a twisting manoeuvre. Oh no! This could not be happening.
"Immediately the ‘Strictly’ machine swung into action. The medic was called. I knew the cut was not bad enough to stop me taking to the dance floor – but not in the next five minutes.”
Nigel Harman and Katya Jones, followed by Angela Scanlon and Carlos Gu were already ready to perform, so a new running order was quickly put together, with Angela saying: "The show went on!"
She added: "The wardrobe girls were ripping off my tights. The medic was staunching the blood, and a large plaster was being attached to the cut.
"A make-up artist swiftly camouflaged the plaster, and I started to pull on new tights. Not as easy as it sounds. A trick of the wardrobe department is to stitch the women’s skirts to the main body of the underdress, so that if the skirt flies up you don’t get a flash of knicker (well, it is before the watershed.)
"So I had to be cut out of the skirt, before the tights would pull up, and then stitched back in again. Three of the fab wardrobe team were rapidly sewing, while Kai calmly assured me, 'Don’t panic, there is still plenty of time.'
"Phew. We made it, and I loved every minute of the dance."
Following her backstage nightmare, Angela and Kai went on to impress judges and were awarded a score of 31 – their highest yet.
'Strictly Come Dancing' airs every Saturday on BBC One at 6.35pm, and every Sunday at 7.15pm.
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