EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW AND PHOTOS
SHIRLEY BALLAS
ON HOW FINDING LOVE AND TURNING TO COUNSELLING HAVE HELPED HER HEAL
INTERVIEW: LAURA BENJAMIN
DRESS: SUZANNE NEVILLE. EARRINGS: SWAROVSKI
Shirley Ballas is on sparkling form when we meet just days before she takes the hot seat on the Strictly Come Dancing judges’ panel.
Chatting in her usual easy manner, she is radiating good health and happiness and clearly in a very joyful place with her boyfriend of nearly two years, Daniel Ta
The 60-year-old Liverpool-born star is always open and candid, but never more so than today, when she reveals to hello! that she has turned to counselling after writing her autobiography Behind the Sequins
“It was very difficult to write,” she says. “It’s almost like I was reading somebody else’s life.”
The book brought back memories of several tough and unresolved periods of her life, she tells us. “It put me into counselling - I’d been reliving everything and thinking if there was anything I could have changed or done differently.
“I need to process everything that has been brought up by writing the book and also understand a little bit about why I have so many walls that go up.”