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Tasha Ghouri has spoken about how her disability has affected her Strictly Come Dancing rehearsals.

The Love Island star, 26, was born deaf and initially fitted for hearing aids before receiving a single cochlear implant just before her fifth birthday. The device assists with Ghouri’s hearing by electrically stimulating her auditory nerve.

Ahead of her first Strictly performance, the reality star discussed her “concentration fatigue” with her professional dance partner Aljaz Skorjanec, who suggested they practice with the show’s live band ahead of their first performance of the series.

When Skorjanec asked Ghouri if Strictly training had been a struggle at any point, the influencer replied: “I think when you grow up with deafness you learn how to adapt.”

She explained: “I can suffer from concentration fatigue from lip reading all day. There may be times when I have a power nap for ten to 20 minutes just to get myself back and re-energised.”

Ghouri admitted: “I would love to take my cochlear implant out to really feel the music. Feel the vibrations. To feel ‘ok this is how it’s going to feel on Saturday night.’”

Skorjanec then suggested he and Ghouri head to the BBC studios where Strictly is filmed ahead of the live show to practice with the live band.

After rehearsing in the studio space, Ghouri said the live music really “elevated the sound” and was eager to film the show.

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Ghouri and Skorjanec wowed the Strictly judges with their cha cha to Sabrina Carpenter’s summer anthem “Espresso”.

“It felt like just you and me on that dance floor,” Ghouri told her partner following the performance, which scored 30 points out of the available 40.

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“I am blown away,” celebrated one fan on X/Twitter. “She just set the bar up high after that.”

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Ghouri has faced criticism over her inclusion in the Strictly Come Dancing line up due to her dance background.

Before shooting to fame on Love Island in 2022, the reality star trained as a dancer at Creative Academy and has since competed at major dance events and performed in music videos.

Some viewers feel that Ghouri’s extensive dance experience will give her an unfair advantage in the competition, but the star has hit back at those claims.

“When you’re in the studio, the glitterballs and the ballroom floor it’s like a whole new world,” she told The Independent and other media.

“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.”

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There are but a few authors who have their own universes within the modern television landscape. Agatha Christie, of course, gets a new adaptation every Christmas. There’s also David Nicholls and Kate Atkinson, or any number of thriller writers, from Gillian Flynn to the indefatigable Harlan Coben. But none have made quite the impression, in recent years, of Australian author Liane Moriarty, whose books have spawned a number of blockbuster sagas, the latest of which, Apples Never Fall, turns up this week on BBC One.

Joy Delaney (Annette Bening) has gone missing. She has recently retired from the tennis academy she ran with her volatile husband Stan (Sam Neill), and her disappearance sparks the concern of her children: anxious Amy (Alison Brie), macho Troy (Jake Lacy), disenchanted Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner), and unreliable Brooke (Essie Randles). Has somebody murdered their mother? And is that “somebody” their father, given that Joy may have been seeking a divorce? Or is Joy’s vanishing somehow linked to the sudden appearance, many months earlier, of a mysterious young woman, Savannah (Georgia Flood), who becomes a cuckoo in the Delaney nest?

If you know Moriarty’s work, you’ll know where this is going. Twists and turns, misdirection and obfuscation, not to mention lashings of family drama. This is the third big-budget adaptation of Moriarty’s work, beginning with 2017’s Big Little Lies, and followed up by Amazon’s Nine Perfect Strangers as the meat in this hammy sandwich. Though they are unified by A-list talent and high production values, the creative ambitions have been progressively stifled. Where Big Little Lies was shot with a vaguely artistic eye, Apples Never Fall is your run-of-the-mill sepia-infused thriller. Even the title is clunky, and the dialogue is often similarly stilted. “Everyone says they want a doctor in the family,” the sibylline Savannah observes. “But I think having someone in the geosciences around is way more interesting.”

All the same, how bad can a show with Annette Bening, Sam Neill and Alison Brie really be? And that is the key to Apples Never Fall. Each episode follows a different Delaney as they navigate both the family dynamics and the muckraking presence who will resurface long-buried secrets. They all glow in the south-Florida light (a relocation from the novel’s Australian setting, though the series is still filmed there), looking preternaturally beautiful. But that’s something that unifies the Moriartiverse: glamorous people, in glamorous settings, behaving slightly repulsively towards one another. And while no one is departing much from their established archetypes – Lacy is now the go-to Hollywood bro, while Brie has played every bug-eyed neurotic going – it all fits together neatly, like a puzzle.

“It kind of felt easy being a martyr,” Joy confesses, in flashback. “Maybe I let myself down.” And for all that Apples Never Fall delivers reliable tropes – the missing woman, the mysterious stranger, the rival from the past who’s back on the scene – its core concern is how a dysfunctional marriage begets a dysfunctional family. The script, from showrunner Melanie Marnich, is frequently heavy-handed, but there’s enough in the material to keep viewers’ interest for seven episodes. And while it doesn’t stick the landing in the same way as Big Little Lies, the rug-pull in the seventh chapter manages, in tennis terms, to be a comfortable put-away, even if it’s not quite a smash.

Apples Never Fall exists in the middle of a Venn diagram between full-blown murder mystery thrillerdom, and an almost soap operatic depiction of crumbling dynasties. It is an emerging portmanteau genre, designed to unite men and women, young and old, in something mildly exciting, mildly titillating and mildly relatable. The result is a show that lacks the crunch of a Pink Lady, but still has the mellow tones and summer flavourings of a Golden Delicious.

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Chris McCausland has detailed a mishap he and Strictly Come Dancing’s Dianne Buswell suffered ahead of the series’ first live show.

The comedian, 47, who is the show’s first blind contestant, performed a cha cha with his professional partner to “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles on Saturday night (21 September).

Strictly’s judges, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse, Shirley Ballas and Anton Du Beke, were in awe of what McCausland had achieved and scored the performance 23 out of 40 points.

But McCausland, who lost his sight aged 22 due to a hereditary condition called retinitis pigmentosa, later revealed to the Strictly presenter Claudia Winkleman that training had not been without its difficulties.

“[Dianne] kicked me in the head one day,” he admitted. “I did not avoid or anticipate it. I stood there and took a foot right to the face.”

Detailing how she has been teaching McCausland their Strictly routines, Buswell explained ahead of their performance: “I can’t show [Chris] what something needs to look like.

“But I’ve found that Chris places his hand on my body or he feels what my arms are doing and then he instantly gets an idea of what he should be doing.”

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McCausland added: “Working with Diane, her energy never wavers. She’s really really patient and she’s definitely bringing the best out of me.”

He continued: “It’s a good partnership and I couldn’t be happier.”

The comedian told The Independent ahead of his first Strictly performance that he and Buswell are “winging it” when it comes to their training technique.

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“We’re just gonna have to figure it out as we go along,” he said.

“The production team are just being really flexible. My dance partner is figuring out how to teach me. And we are winging it. That’s the best way I think.”

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McCausland received a standing ovation from Strictly’s studio audience for his first performance on the show on Saturday night.

“It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” judge Anton Du Beke praised. “Just brilliant.”

Meanwhile, Shirley Ballas added: “I didn’t know what to expect… you had great skills listening to your partner.

“I’m quite shocked and very emotional.”