Ellie had also filmed her first acting role, as Nancy in the BBC series Malory Towers, for which she has just been nominated for an Emmy award.
“I wanted to be on Vogue, and that happened. I wanted to act, and I got the part on Malory Towers, but Strictly was my big dream,” she adds.
When she got the call, she had already proved so many people wrong.
On the day Ellie was born, her mother Yvonne was told her daughter had Down’s syndrome and would never amount to much.
“A nurse asked me if I wanted to leave Ellie at the hospital,” she says.
Ellie had to have open heart surgery when she was five months old.
“It was an 11-hour operation. I remember walking round London in silence, just willing the time away,” Yvonne says.
