Shirley Ballas says dead brother spoke to her as she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro
The Strictly Come Dancing star knows she heard her late brother David – who took his own life 17 years ago – call out to her when she was climbing for Comic Relief last year
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Shirley Ballas claims she heard the voice of her tragic late brother when she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
The Strictly Come Dancing star still feels the loss, 17 years after David took his own life.
Shirley, 60, has now revealed how she heard his “comforting” voice as she neared the summit after blaming herself for his death.
She was part of a celebrity team who climbed Kilimanjaro for the Comic Relief charity last year.
Her brother David died aged 44 at his home in Liverpool and now the Strictly queen has told the Daily Star about what it meant to feel close to David again.
Shirley explained how hearing David talk to her on her epic journey helped her carry on through the most difficult trials of the challenge.
She said: “As anybody who’s ever gone up a mountain will know, there is plenty of time when it’s just you and your thoughts.
“You walk for miles and miles and miles, often in perfect silence, too tired to chat, and that’s when your thoughts and memories come flooding in – in my case, the cause of my life’s greatest sadness.
“I couldn’t control my emotions, and I can only assume it was the altitude. It plays tricks on your mind and makes for a very lonely, sad experience.
“But something else happened too, which I found immensely comforting. On one of our final days reaching the summit, I distinctly heard my brother talking to me.
“All he said was ‘Shirley’, but it sounded exactly like him, and it was a reminder of why I was doing all this, just when I needed it most.”
She did the epic charity challenge alongside Love Island winner Dani Dyer, telly host Dan Walker and Little Mix superstars Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-Anne Pinnock.
In her new book Behind The Sequins, Shirley reveals she still blames herself for his death.
On the night David died, she had persuaded her mum to go to London to see her grandson Mark, Shirley’s son, perform at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, thinking her mum could do with a night off after looking after her brother for eight weeks.
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