Craig Revel Horwood risked facing the wrath of Gemma Collins last month when he referred to her as too ‘low rent’ for Strictly Come Dancing.
And the TOWIE star, 36, has now hit back at the dance show judge’s desire to blacklist reality stars from the BBC One show – admitting that she found his comment ‘funny’ and explaining that ‘everyone had to start from somewhere’.
Speaking to The Sun, the bubbly TV sensation revealed: ‘I’m not low rent, Craig. We’ve all got to start somewhere and it’s a shame to just knock someone out of giving them a chance because they don’t think I’m high calibre enough.’
‘We all have to start somewhere!’ Gemma Collins has hit back at Craig Revel Horwood for claiming she was too ‘low rent’ for Strictly Come Dancing
Clearly seeing red, Gemma expanded: ‘Well I’m sorry I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth but I get 2.2million hits on my social media. Where did he start?
‘He was just a dancer and I was just a girl from Romford once. I’m not being funny, a couple more years who knows? I could be sitting drinking tea with Madonna,’ she continued, before admitting ‘If anything, I’d probably bring a different audience to the BBC.’
The furore started when Gemma openly admitted that she would love to be a part of Strictly after suffering her now viral fall at the BBC Teen Awards in October.
In October, she panicked the 12,000-strong crowd at the BBC’s Radio 1 Teen Awards when she fell feet-first through a trapdoor onstage.
‘She’s not high calibre!’ Craig Revel Horwood risked facing the wrath of Gemma last month when he dismissed her desire to compete on Strictly
Clearly seeing red, Gemma hit back at Craig’s unfavourable view on her background: ‘I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth but I get 2.2million hits on my social media. Where did he start?
Not realising that the stage beside her had dropped down, Gemma began to dance and twirl around to Ariana Grande’s Into You when she accidentally fell on top of ITV2 stars Jamie Jewitt, Amber Davies and Marcel Somerville.
Proving that chivalry isn’t dead, Jamie and Marcel quickly turned towards Gemma to help her get back to her feet as the stage continued to raise up while Amber greeted the SSE Arena, demonstrating that the show must go on.
Putting on a brave face, the ITV darling reassured the 12,500 concert goers that she was OK following the nasty tumble.
She called out to packed out crowd: ‘Oh my God. Guys sorry about that. This is live, this is what happens.’
However, Gemma did acknowledge how lucky she had been as her injuries could have been much more severe when she appeared on This Morning after the incident.
‘It could have been fatal,’ she revealed. ‘Under there there’s so much machinery going on.’
And in exchange to drop the legal threat, she offered the suggestion to the BBC to let her compete in Strictly.
However, judge Craig wasn’t having any of it as he dubbed her, as well as other reality stars, too ‘low-rent’ to appear on the hughely popular dance show.
Speaking to The Sun last month, Craig admitted: ‘Gemma Collins would be fun on the show but it’s not very often that we have reality stars take to the ballroom.
‘We generally have people of a higher calibre than that.’