Strictly star Shirley: My stalker hell means I can never feel safe now...

SHIRLEY Ballas says she feared for her life during a nightmare seven-year stalking campaign and admitted: “I will never feel completely safe again.”

- BY TOM BRYANT

The brave Strictly Come Dancing judge, 64, opened up about her ordeal at the hands of Kyle Shaw, 37, who was given a suspended 20-month prison term in April for targeting the star and her loved ones.

Talking to this newspaper about the lasting mental impact of his twisted behaviour, Shirley said: “I'm looking around and watching all the time.... and life shouldn't have to be like that. That's what he’s done to me and my family.”

In her new memoir, Best Foot Forward, the star reveals the sheer scale of Shaw's campaign for the first time — including how he followed and confronted her elderly mum, Audrey, in a supermarket.

Shirley writes: “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? I had smoke detectors installed everywhere.

“He'd shown he was prepared to follow a little old lady round the supermarket, what else was he capable of doing to frighten the living daylights out of my family?”

Shirley’s ordeal began in 2017 when she replaced head judge Len Goodman on Strictly.

Shaw sent messages to her social media account, claiming to be the son of her late brother David, who tragically took his own life aged 44, in 2003.

HOUNDING

At first, Shirley and her team thought he was a crank but the messages escalated and became increasingly graphic.

“He was soon hounding me through every channel possible. Via Facebook Messenger, Twitter and Instagram, he was demanding a DNA test and accusing me of killing David,” she writes.