Shirley Ballas looks back: ‘I was crying about a breakup, so Mum smacked me round the face’ (opens in new tab)

The Strictly judge and her mum on Shirley’s love of dance, being a single-parent family, and the joy of living together nowBorn in Wallasey (now Merseyside) in 1960, Shirley Ballas is one of the most decorated ballroom and Latin dancers in the world. She became a three-time winner of the British Professional Latin Championship (Open to the World), before retiring from competitive dancing in 1996 to become a teacher and adjudicator. In 2017, she joined the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing as a judg...