Strictly Come Dancing star Shirley Ballas has taken part in a tattoo charity fundraiser to help raise money and awareness for the anti-suicide charity CALM
Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas has got a tattoo in honour of her late brother – and to raise funds for a mental health charity. The 64-year-old TV star was left devastated in 2003 when her brother, David, took his own life at the age of 44.
Shirley has discussed her love for her brother and her sadness over her loss in the past – as well as highlighting the fact that he struggled with depression in order to help others find the help they need. On Saturday, the dance expert got a tattoo of her late brother’s first and second initials as well as his last name, Rich.
Taking to Instagram, Shirley posed alongside tattooist Tal Booker, 31, the brother of Love Island star Eyal Booker, 29, and showed off her new inking. She wrote alongside the post: “A tattoo for my brother… thank you @talbooker honoured to be tattoo number 2 of 24 in your @calmzone #TattooAThon.”
Shirley previously discussed her loss on the Great Company podcast, revealing her family battled to have her brother get help before his tragic suicide. She said: “I was wrapped up in my life, because at that time, I had two other children I was taking care of, plus my own son, and they were all dancers, and I was just wrapped up in my world of ballroom dancing.
“I was in London. He was up north, and my mother went to stay with him for six weeks. But my mother’s old school, and they don’t share. So, what I should have done then, if I look back now, is gotten the car straight away and gone to see the situation for myself. He was just in a bad place.
“He explained it like being in a dark, black hole that he couldn’t climb out of. He’d lost a lot of weight, and the doctors couldn’t help him.
“We tried to get him sectioned, and when, apparently, I wasn’t there, but my mum was. When they took him in the car and they pulled up to the hospital, he recognized somebody that was stood on the steps, and he was too he was the macho man on the housing estate, and he was too embarrassed, he made them turn the car around.
“So had she not been there that day, then maybe things could have been different. And it just nobody talked about things like that. No one talked about things like that at all, and they just popped in with pills, you know, like these antidepressants.”
And expressing her sadness over David’s death, she said: “‘I still remember the morning it happened. I call my mum to say that Mark, my son, would be performing at St Paul’s church in London, and maybe they both like to come down for the day.
“And my brother said, no, no, no, no, I’m feeling much better now. But you go mum, and against her better judgment, she didn’t want to go. And I pushed her to go a little bit because she’d been there, you know, and was having this tough time. David didn’t want to go, and it was that they chose to do that.
“So, for that, I will live with for the rest of my life. She blames herself, but I blame myself because I was the one pushing her to go. She felt she shouldn’t have left.”
Meanwhile, Tal has set out to raise funds for the anti-suicide charity CALM where he has planned to tattoo 24 designs within 24 hours. He explained via Instagram previously: “The most likely thing to kill a young person is themselves, and around 18 people day in the UK die by suicide. One of the ways we can change that, is by talking about it.
“That’s why I’ve teamed up with @calmzone to do a 24 hour tattoo-a-thon on the 7th and 8th June. To raise vital funds and start important conversations.
“If you’d like to get involved or show your support, head over to thecalmzone.net to register your interest or donate at the link in my bio. Just £12.20 is enough to fund one potentially life saving call.”
For information and support from the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), visit www.thecalmzone.net or call 0800 58 58 58