Now hear this

A deaf ballet dancer has criticised health club chain Virgin Active for Photoshopping out her hearing implant in an international advert, above. South African Simone Botha Welgemoed, 27, has been deaf since birth and was 22 months old when she was fitted with a Cochlear implant in 1992. But when she saw the Virgin Active advert on social media, the implant had been edited out.

The gym chain has since apologised to her and replaced the picture with an image that shows the implant. The dancer, who was crowned Miss Deaf South Africa in 2012, said: “I couldn’t believe what I saw when my sister tagged me in the Virgin advertisement on Instagram. It felt like somebody just dropped a bucket of water on me.” A spokesman for Virgin said: “We issued an immediate apology to Simone. We got it wrong and we realise that.”