Shirley Ballas details receiving grim death threat showing her digging own grave

Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas received a grim death threat when she was performing in pantomime.

The performer, 60, opened up on the details of horrific note - which was hand delivered to the theatre she was working at - in her new autobiography Behind The Sequins, that was released this month.

Shirley explains in the book how she opened the letter to find a nasty message and chilling image.

She penned: "This one showed a figure of me digging my own grave, with the message, 'Do you realise how much you are hated?'

"The country hates you. How did they ever give a job to someone like you, you old witch'."

Shirley recently admitted that she is worried she will be trolled even worse than before due to lockdown amid the new series of Strictly.

She told PA: "Going into this next phase of Strictly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the trolling is 10 times worse because people are in lockdown, because we may go into a second lockdown and heaven help us if we do and people are sat at home with nothing more to do."

Shirley explained that she was first trolled when she joined the show in 2017 and said that the first year was incredibly tough.

She said: "The first year it was very difficult, when people tell you ‘You’ve got a chest like a Seville orange that’s been eaten by a thousand slugs. Ugly bitch, die,’ and people doing coffins with your head on them.

“We (she and her mother) talked about whether I should continue, given the invasion of privacy, but my mother decided we needed to take everything with a sense of humour. So when they laugh at me or call me stupid or thick, I just have to let it go.”

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