Tasha Ghouri

Tasha Ghouri
File:Tasha Ghoury (cropped).jpg Ghouri in 2023
Born	(1998-08-11) 11 August 1998 Thirsk, England
Occupation	Television personality

Natasha Amber Ghouri (/ɡʊriː/, born 11 August 1998) is an English television personality. Born deaf, she became a dancer and a model, appearing in the music video for "More Than Words" by Sleepwalkers featuring MNEK, and initially attracted attention for modelling earrings for ASOS; her appearances on the eighth series of Love Island brought her numerous ambassadorial roles, and she later launched a podcast, "Superpowers with Tasha", and announced a book, Hits Different. In January and February 2024, she spent a week as the Dictionary Corner guest on Countdown.

Life and career

Early life

Natasha Amber Ghouri (/ɡʊriː/) was born on 11 August 1998 in Thirsk in North Yorkshire to Nicky Young and Tarek Ghouri, and has a brother, Alex. She was born deaf, and was initially fitted for hearing aids, before being given a single cochlear implant at Bradford Royal Infirmary just before her fifth birthday which lasted until she was sixteen and went unreplaced for five months; she later underwent speech therapy, and was unable to speak until she was five, having communicated entirely in British Sign Language until that point. She took up ballet aged three, and would copy the choreography of her parents' copy of the Steps album Gold: Greatest Hits; she later attended Thirsk Primary School, Boston Spa Academy, CAPA College, and Creative Academy in Slough.

After graduating, she moved to London, and signed to a modelling agency, and worked as a self-employed dancer behind a bar before spending six months in France. In October 2020, she featured in the music video for "More Than Words" by Sleepwalkrs featuring MNEK, which was directed by Mike Baldwin and featured a performance from a dance troupe composed of deaf and hard of hearing dancers, and in April 2021, ASOS ran an advertising campaign for earrings featuring Ghouri, for which they went viral over their choice to hire a cochlear implant wearer and attracted praise from Sense, The National Deafblind and Rubella Association and the Royal National Institute for Deaf People.

Love Island

In 2022, Ghouri applied for the ITV2 dating show Love Island; she told a October 2023 edition of Grace Beverley's "Working Hard, Hardly Working" podcast that she had previously applied for Too Hot to Handle, but had been told that she "weren't right for it", and that a producer who worked on both shows passed her name on. ITV announced in May 2022 that Ghouri would be an original contestant on Love Island's eighth series, becoming the format's first deaf contestant. She was initially coupled up with Andrew Le Page after facing a public vote, though was taken on a hot tub date by Charlie Radnedge two weeks in, and she and Le Page remained a couple until the format's Casa Amor, when Le Page spent a brief period with Coco Lodge before breaking up with her and Ghouri spent a brief period with Billy Brown before breaking up with him; a disgruntled Lodge later revealed to their fellow Islanders what she and Le Page had got up to on the first night of Casa Amor, and Le Page later went viral for his awkward explanation to Ghouri that he had "licked her tit, or whatever" (he had actually sucked it).

Ghouri and Le Page ultimately made the final and placed joint-fourth, spending 58 days on the show; the volume of abuse directed at Ghouri later led her social media delegates to request that commentators stop mocking her deafness, and in December 2022, ITV announced that it would ban Islanders from having active social media accounts during their time on the program. She and Le Page moved in to an apartment in East London in September 2022, later adopting a dog, Luna. Ghouri later used an April 2023 tweet to allege that filming for Love Island had obstructed her from filming for the 2023 film Barbie, for which she had auditioned as a dancer and got through to the finals.

Later activity

After Love Island, she used her platform to encourage people to learn sign language. In August 2022, eBay announced that Ghouri would be their first 'pre-loved' ambassador, and the following month she released a 60-item collection on the website, with proceeds going to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People; also in September, she became an ambassador for Cadbury Fingers, for whom she filmed a campaign video in conjunction with the National Deaf Children's Society, and L'Oréal. She later became an ambassador for Ann Summers, for whom she featured in their Christmas advert and fronted their Luminescent collection, Sisters & Seekers, a Llay-based fashion label, and Lullabellz, a Manchester-based hair extension brand. In December 2022, she appeared as a contestant on the Weakest Link and on Britain Get Singing, a singing competition; she later appeared on the seventh series of CelebAbility.

In 2023, she launched a podcast, "Superpowers with Tasha", in which she reimagines disabilities as superpowers, and in September 2023, Ghouri and the London-based autistic author and editor Lizzie Huxley-Jones announced that they were writing a romantic novel, Hits Different, in which a deaf young adult pursues her dream of becoming a dancer, which Hot Key Books later acquired the rights to; Wales Online used their article to note that Ghouri had made their announcement to her 1,500,000 followers. In January and February 2024, she spent a week as the Dictionary Corner guest on the UK game show Countdown, shortly after which she and Johannes Radebe taught a beginner's tap class at Meadows Community Centre in Cambridge in which Queen Camilla was a participant.

In February 2024, the Advertising Standards Authority placed her on their non-compliance page for routinely posting unlabelled adverts despite previous warnings. Later that month, the BBC reported that a Get Ready With Me video she had "recently" uploaded to TikTok in which she removed her cochlear implant and spoke in her deaf accent had acquired "almost 3 million views", been "widely shared" on the platform, and been praised by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, and on 15 February, RTÉ reported that Ghouri had uploaded the video to "her nearly 863k followers". She then took part in a government campaign to combat loneliness, alongside Josh Patterson, Bobby Brazier, Bradley Riches, Anastasia Kingsnorth, and Bronte King.