EXCLUSIVE: Shirley Ballas opens up to the Mirror about the end of her relationship with Danny Taylor for the first time as she releases her gripping new book Best Foot Forward
Shirley Ballas has opened up about the end of her relationship with fiance Danny Taylor – including her lavish spending on him.
In an exclusive interview with the Mirror’s Tom Bryant as she releases her new memoir Best Foot Forward, she says how they “weren’t growing together anymore .”
And she heartbreakingly confesses in the book 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.”
Shirley also 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.
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.
Shirley also opens up about 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 in the interview. 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.”
BEST FOOT FORWARD by SHIRLEY BALLAS, published by BBC Books on 11th September at £22 Copyright © Shirley Ballas 2025
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