Amy Dowden’s motto is simple: “Don’t get bitter, get better.” There is so much she could be bitter about. As the dancer put it herself in the BBC documentary Strictly Amy: Cancer and Me, in the past year she has had to contend with a mastectomy, chemotherapy, sepsis, blood clots and a broken foot, to say nothing of menopause, breast reconstruction surgery and the Crohn’s disease she has lived with since the age of 19. But this was the vow Dowden made last August on the eve of her against-the-odds return to Strictly Come Dancing. She had missed the 2023 season completely thanks to the cancer that came to light when she discovered a lump in her breast the day before her honeymoon. 2023 was a hellscape. 2024 was supposed to be her year. Until it wasn’t.
In October, in week six of Strictly, dressed as a freckly scarecrow for the Halloween special, Dowden collapsed backstage after her foxtrot to Dancing in the Moonlight. Her breast cancer – actually two types of cancer, ductal and lobular – is in remission, subject to annual checks, and her Crohn’s is under control. But stress fractures to the shin are a common peril for all dancers. Having spent most of the previous year in and out of hospital, she then had to watch the show from the sidelines again, as her celebrity partner – the JLS singer JB Gill – made it all the way to the final with Dowden’s friend, the professional dancer Lauren Oakley.
