Shirley Ballas breaks silence on toyboy's devastating vanishing act and red flags she ignored

Shirley Ballas remembers the exact moment when her world came crashing down. Cuddling up in bed with her 87-year-old mum Audrey at 9pm on the day of her 64th birthday, her phone suddenly lit up.

It was a relative of her fiance Danny Taylor telling her that he’d gone missing, his phone was off and his family were very worried about him. Suddenly she was engulfed by the harrowing thoughts of her brother David who had tragically taken his own life, in 2003, aged 44.

“All those memories came flooding back…it triggered all these emotions,” she says quietly. Her number was passed to the police who were also concerned about the circumstances, and she spent the next few hours frantically trying to track Danny down, calling around all his friends and family.

At 2am, she noticed that her Whatsapps to Danny had been read. But relief turned to anger as Danny reappeared the next day and carried on as if nothing had happened. Almost immediately she realised that she couldn’t have someone in her life who could cause her such agony again.

“I will never forget that day until the day I die. I remember looking across in the middle of the night and I saw my mother was just so upset, reliving all of her trauma,” she says. “I just thought ‘this can’t go on’. Not just for my sake, but my mum too.”

Strictly Come Dancingstar Shirley is opening up to the Mirror as she prepares to release her incredible new memoir, Best Foot Forward. And talking to the warm-hearted star, it’s clear the night of her birthday has left an indelible mark.

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“I still loved him but I thought this is something I can’t continue to be a part of,” Shirley explains. “It’s all very sad.”

Her and Danny, who is 13 years younger, had met while doing panto together in 2018. The TV star, who had been single for four and a half years, was playing Mother Nature and Danny was evil Fleshcreep in Jack And The Beanstalk in Liverpool. She admits she quickly fell head over heels for him, with the pair getting engaged in 2021. She had even bought the wedding rings.

“There was no question about how much I loved that man. And he came into my life at a point when I really, really needed it and he was such a caring person,” she explains. “But what’s the nicest way to say this? Along the line, there were red flags that I chose to ignore, but it just got to a point where the relationship was becoming too difficult for me in many ways.”

Shirley says that Danny was a “drifter by nature” and if they had a row or discussion that became slightly heated, they wouldn’t talk for days. It was, she says, not unlike her dad who would often go awol during her childhood.

Things that she used to find endearing such as never knowing what time his train was getting in, or arriving at her front door with a suitcase in disarray, soon began to grate. In the book she writes about how she showered him with gifts “thinking that’s how I should show him I loved him.”

As a result, he had the “best of the best” including tailor-made clothes, Gucci shoes, Mont Blanc cufflinks, gorgeous holidays, and a Mini Coupé. She even hired him as her PA during Covid as he wasn’t earning a living.

“We weren’t growing together anymore, and I was getting more and more worried about things that were going on in his life, and I already have a lot of things to worry about,” she says. “I just needed some peace.”

After splitting following that fateful night, communication between the two of them has been sparse. They exchange the odd text message but it feels that Shirley has been doing the heavy-lifting on that front. “We still haven’t seen each other face to face since that night, which I’ve asked for many times,” she says. “I’m a person who needs closure, and it’s just never closed. I always think it’s nice to sit in a room, because when people write text messages, you don’t really know the tone.”

Unsurprisingly, Shirley admits she’s not keen to rush into another relationship, if at all. She has been married twice before. She tied the knot with her dance partner Sammy Stopford in 1980 but divorced after four years. Then there was a fiery marriage to another dancer Corky Ballas with whom she has a son, Mark.

It ended in 2007 amid allegations of infidelity. At 16, she was also briefly engaged to her first dance partner, Nigel Tiffany, who she remains friends with to this day.

“I don’t think I’ll ever have another relationship, but if I did, it would have to be with somebody that was much more calm and saw us growing in the same direction,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean that those six years I had with Danny, I didn’t adore him. I just didn’t really have a choice.”

In the meantime she has been getting used to being on her own again, but admits in the book how she feels “incomplete and a little lost.” Such experiences have only crystallised her belief that nothing is forever although she jokes that she is thinking about joining dating app Raya.

“I think my ‘toyboy’ days are behind me. I reckon anything from 55 to 70 if they’re fit,” she adds. It’s clear the loves of her life now are very much her son, Mark, 38, and mum, Audrey.

The lattermoved in with Shirley in her south-east London home in 2021, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. Like this time around, she’s always been by her daughter’s side.

“I decided to get engaged at 16, and she was not sure about that. Then I got married at 19, so I think I was a constant pain in her butt throughout all those years,” she laughs. “And then, of course, I ran off to America to be with Corky and left my first husband……and then, of course, I got pregnant in the middle of my career.

“I remember calling her and saying, ‘you know what, Mum, I’m pregnant’ and she couldn’t believe it. So she’s very much seen it all.”

BEST FOOT FORWARD by SHIRLEY BALLAS, published by BBC Books on 11th September at £22 Copyright © Shirley Ballas 2025