ANDOVER’S favourite daughter made her parents proud during a romantic dance on a BBC primetime show.

Saturday was the first live show of the 2018 Strictly Come Dancing series, which sees Andover’s own Katie Piper competing against fellow celebrities.

The television presenter, author and acid attack survivor was nervous about her live dancing debut, saying : “I haven’t actually ever danced with these injuries so I didn’t know If it would hold me back. I’ve got a lot of scar tissue and skin grafts on my neck, and similarly I’m blind on my left side. We all have our limitations in life, I think you have to make what you can of it.”

At 24 years old, her ex-partner Danny Lynch paid Stefan Sylvestre to throw sulphuric acid in her face on the street.

The attack left her with permanent scarring to her face, neck, chest arms and hands, and partially blinded. She has since had over 300 surgeries.

Gorka Marquez, who finished joint runner-up in 2017 with X Factor winner Alexandra Burke, has been trying to ease Katie's nerves as they prepared for there performance on Saturday night. He said: “I think it’s a great partnership because I think she’s an exceptional women.”

With her parents in the audience, Katie said: “I think the thing I’m most looking forward to is making my mum and dad proud and happy.”

Katie sparkled in a glamorous white dress as the pair performed a fairytale Waltz to When We Were Young by Adele.

Bruno Tonioli said: “Don’t overthink it, I could see you overthinking it. Don’t worry about it too much.”

Judge Craig Revel Horwood added: “You went horribly wrong halfway through but you managed to get back into the swing of it,” while Darcey Bussell said: “It’s so hard to hide nerves but you really did.”

Lastly Shirley Ballas told her: “You show some great promise.”

The pair were awarded fours by three of the judges, while Bruno gave them five for a combined score of 17, placing them at second to last on the leaderboard by the end of the show.

There was no public vote meaning no contestants would leave on the first week. The scores will be carried over and added to this weekend’s show.