Shirely Ballas took some time out of her hectic schedule to speak with Paul C Brunson about her humble roots, rise to ballroom stardom and the tragic losses in her life during a lengthy podcast interview with the Married at First Sight Expert. In one part of the conversation, the 54-year-old broke down in tears as she opened up about the devastating loss of her brother, David, who took his own life.

She was left heartbroken over his passing as the pair shared a close bond, having grown up as each other's only sibling in Wallassey with their mother, Audrey Rich. Shirley shared: “My brother was either very up or very down. He was not often on the line. I've heard when we started off, before we moved on the housing estate, my brother was a very gentle soul, and I was the one always screaming and crying and wanting this and dancing round.

"My mother used to put me in the pram, strap me in and put me at the bottom of the yard. Because she said I was upside down doing somersaults in the pram. And my brother was really quite a gentle soul.

"Then we moved to the housing estate. I can't speak for him because he's since passed, but certain things went on in his life, you know, that were not great, which were communicated many, many years later. And I think it just, he had to toughen up, you know, became the tough guy."

The Latin dancing legend then revealed that David became unwell in his forties while she was navigating life in London, and he remained in the North of England. Audrey would visit David during this difficult time, but she lived many miles away from him.

She continued: "When he was 43, 44 he got poorly, lived in the north of England. I lived in the South and I remember my mum going to stay with him. She was with him for about six weeks. He seemed very low. He lost a lot of weight. We never really got to the root cause of - I think maybe, if I could just say his past was catching up with him maybe - And, I just think he just somehow went into a dark hole.”

"The thing is, with depression and mental health, I knew nothing about that," Shirley added. "I was busy, I had my son, I had my husband, my mother lived with me and somebody else's two children that I raised. So life was busy, and I didn't stop to go up there. My mother did."

Shirley admitted David "faded fast", adding: "And then there was just one time when my son was singing at Saint Paul's Church, and I said to my mum and brother. Why don't you come up for the week? And he goes, no, I'm feeling much better. Let mum go.

"And she went, and he took his own life that weekend in our home, in our north of England home. So it was just, it was tragic. It was sudden. It was - you can't even explain it unless you lose somebody.”

David was 44 years old when he died in 2003, and he left behind his young daughter, Mary. Not long after his passing, Mary's mother died of alcoholism, so Shirley raised Mary as her own.

The full podcast interview can be listened to on Spotify.