I'll never feel completely safe again after my stalker ordeal

SHIRLEY BALLAS TALKS ABOUT HER FEARS, HER RECENT BREAK UP AND SUICIDAL THOUGHTS IN BOMBSHELL BOOK.

- BY TOM BRYANT

In her memoir, Shirley also opens up about her seven-year stalking ordeal, admitting, “I will never feel completely safe again”.

Her nightmare began when she joined the Strictly panel as the new head judge in 2017, replacing the outgoing Len Goodman.

Kyle Shaw, 37, claimed to be the biological son of her late brother, David, and began hounding Shirley with twisted messages on social media - even accusing her of killing David. One sinister message read, “Just a reminder, my dad is dead because of you, because you left him alone. He’s dead. You killed him. You murdered him.”

Shirley called the police and Shaw was warned not to contact her again. But the warning did nothing.

She writes: “He also started bombarding other members of my family, including my elderly mother.”

At one point, Shaw even managed to get hold of her former partner Danny's phone number. He told him he knew where they lived and, chillingly, described their recent movements.

Writing in Best Foot Forward, Shirley says: “I didn’t feel safe in my own home and had sleepless nights worrying about what he was going to do. Would he put a bomb through the letterbox? Or try to set the house on fire?”

The “final straw” came when Shaw confronted Shirley's elderly mother in a supermarket, a “horrifying experience” that led to Shirley moving Audrey into her London home.

Eventually, in December 2023, Shaw was arrested and later charged with stalking. In April this year, he was handed a 20-month suspended sentence and banned from contacting Shirley or any of her family again.

It’s clear Shirley is still haunted by the experience.

“I’m looking around and watching all the time and life shouldn’t have to be like that,” she says.