CELEBRITY
INTERVIEW
P
icture the angel on top of the Christmas tree - petite,
beautiful and dazzling. This sums up Shirley Ballas.
She’s sitting opposite me in the bar at the
Darlington Hippodrome, dressed in her Mother
Nature panto outfit, swinging a silver wand in one hand and
balancing a cup of black coffee in the other. She may be tiny,
but she’s a bundle of energy.
I compliment her outfit as I manage to avoid being hit with
the magic stick. “I like this one,” she says, ruffling her skirts
and giving away a trace of her native Wallasey accent. "But I’m
getting two more made – one in blue to match the sky when
I fly up and another in purple to match Danny’s Flesh Creep
outfit.”
Ahh, Danny, that would be Daniel Taylor, Ms Ballas’s co-star
and main squeeze. Their paths crossed in panto a year ago,
but just recently the Liverpool actor, 47, has put a spring in
Shirley’s step as her life partner.
"We’ve been here together for three days and every part of
my body is tingling,” she giggles. "I feel like a teenager. He’s too
good to be true really. It’s a proper panto love story! Indeed it
is!
“I’d been single for six years and I decided that I would never
be with any one any more,” Shirley, 59, explains. “I’d given up
on love.
“When I went into panto it was just fate because I had a
choice of venues and I picked Liverpool Empire because my
mother had cancer and I wanted to be close to her and allow
her to see me as much as she could, and then of course I met
this man, this amazing man...”
Until Danny came along, Christmas was always tinged
with sadness for Shirley and her family. “As a child Christmas
was very special to me, but then my brother David died one
December - he committed suicide in the Christmas month, so
for 15 years we didn’t celebrate it, my mother and I.
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“It was Danny who coaxed us to put a small tree up, baubles
and this and that, and in fact last year turned out to be the best
Christmas ever; one, doing panto and being in Liverpool, and
two, meeting Danny. He was so warm and sympathetic towards
our situation.”
It had been Craig Revel Horwood, her fellow Strictly judge,
who'd encouraged Shirley to tread the boards.
“I’d never sang or acted in my life before, but Craig said it
would suit my personality, so I got in touch with Qdos and the
rest is history.
“It’s funny but I’m sitting here in this beautiful building and
it suddenly dawns on me that my son, Mark, actually played
Buddy Holly in this very theatre, so he knows Darlington really
well and he’ll be here on opening night watching me - how
cool is that?!”
Not that the North-East is completely unfamiliar to Shirley.
"It may be my first time in panto here but I’ve done dance
demonstrations many, many times up and down the country
and around the North-East with Sammy (Stopford, her first