Strictly Come Dancing head judge Shirley Ballas has said she will “never feel completely safe again” after being targeted by a stalker who accused her of killing a member of her family.
The 64-year-old moved her mother to a different home and increased security measures due to harassment by Kyle Shaw, 37, who in February pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to stalking Ballas, causing serious harm or distress between August 31, 2017 and November 29, 2023.
In an interview with the Sunday Mirror, Ballas said of the incident: “I will never feel completely safe again.
“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.”
Ballas discusses the experience in her new memoir Best Foot Forward, revealing Shaw followed and confronted her elderly mother Audrey in a supermarket, and how she worried he would “put a bomb through the letterbox” or “set the house on fire”.
She said Shaw’s campaign began when he started sending her messages on social media claiming to be the biological son of her late brother David, who died of suicide in 2003 aged 44.
The Wallasey-born dancer added: “The messages he wrote to this little old lady who has never gotten over the death of her son, it was very hard.
“As for me, I don’t think I’ve ever travelled by train since, I’m always looking over my shoulder. If I go to the park, I never go after six o’clock. If I’m walking somewhere, I never have ear plugs in.”
Ballas told the Sunday Mirror one 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. You did this. Why did you leave my dad to die?’.”
She installed CCTV and an extra alarm system at her house following the incident, and says the BBC gave her additional security while working on Strictly projects.
Ballas said Shaw sent her a picture of her house and car on social media, and threatened to turn up at dates on the promotional tour for her debut novel, as well as getting her former partner Danny Taylor’s phone number.
