You’d expect that the real story in a TV talent contest would revolve around the person who got eliminated. Not in this show. Although the woman who did get eliminated had her own story, last night’s episode revolved around Jess, her disabilities and her relationship between the rest of the remaining girls. Over the weeks, there has been rumblings – mostly from wheelchair-bound Sophie - that Jess isn’t pulling her weight and is perhaps a little bit needy. Last night was the night when it all started to come out in one, big mascara-painted splurge and Jess got a fearful caning.

So let’s get the challenge out of the way first. Last night the girls (four of them left now) had to work with a group of beefbus male models. For the girls this meant intimacy, which meant confronting yet another side to their disabilities they hadn’t done previously. Getting intimate with a guy was something that (apart from Kelly Knox, who admitted she was a sexual person) gave them the willies.

The brief was to team up with a male model and cast for a fictional ice cream advert, on camera. For deaf girl, Kellie Moody, this was a very tough challenge and she was very uncomfortable at speaking on camera. She suggested that she signed her words, but Jonathan (who was in a very no-messing kind of mood) insisted that she speak her words.

I felt sorry for Kellie in this challenge. She argued that during the catwalk challenge Sophie had used a wheelchair to get herself up on stage, so why couldn’t she use signing? It was a fair argument, but you could counter it with the fact that each challenge seems to be specifically designed for each girl – each one targets a particular girl’s weakness, and in that instance, Sophie sailed through the catwalk challenge and got on with it.

Before Jess was due to go on she had a little kip. For an ME sufferer this isn’t so much of big deal, but the rest of girls, with little time to go before her casting, wouldn’t wake her up. It was her problem, they argued (led by Sophie). The cracks were beginning to show.

For Jess, also a sufferer of a hereditary nerve disease (and also deaf and blind on one side), which could cause her damage if she bangs any part of her body, the idea of touching and getting close to a guy was a very big deal. It was also revealed last night that she’s gay, which, again, doesn’t help when trying to portray believable relationships with guys on camera.

But it wasn’t the photo shoot that lit the touch paper last night. There were discussions between the girls about what was a visible and worthy enough disability, and Jess came off worse. The girls simply didn’t believe Jess’s disability to be anything more than just a posh girl throwing a strop and having a nap now and again. Jess, I think because of her conditions, also has a habit of isolating herself.

This came to a head over a meal the night before the elimination, with Sophie demanding that Jess stop feeling sorry for herself. Jess, in a no-win situation, sobbed that she had to fight all her life for her disabilities to be recognised. Sophie just told her to get on with things.

If the girls were squabbling about which disability deserves to be highlighted in the competition the most, the judges, who had done exactly the same thing in recent weeks, had seemed to sort out their judging criteria – it looked as though they had decided that they were not just looking for a model, but for a spokesperson and visibly disabled girl to make a real statement.

And I think this was the reason why deaf girl Kellie Moody got the boot. The judges argued that the quality of photos had deteriorated through the weeks, but I think that Sophie, who sailed through this week and is getting more confidant and ballsy by the week, is their ideal match.

We’ll see next week. It’s the final.

For more reviews of Britain’s Missing Top Model, go here.