Shirley Ballas climbed Mount Kilimanjaro for her brother.
The ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ head judge took part in Comic Relief’s climb of the mountain, as documented in ‘Kilimanjaro: The Bigger Red Nose Climb’, for her brother, who tragically took his own life over a decade ago.
Speaking to Paul, who has been directly helped by charity Calm – one of the charities partly funded by Comic Relief, she said: "He said he’d got into a dark hole he couldn’t get out of. I’d call him on the phone and tell him, ‘Come on David, you’re going to be fine,’ because I was uneducated so that’s why in some ways I blame myself … He left no note. No goodbye. I can only imagine 16 years ago if my brother had somewhere to go and someone to talk to. It’s a lonelier place without him, but I can only imagine the place he was in. I think my brother would be proud of me. I miss him so I’m doing this for him. If it means sleeping in a tent and being disorganised then so be it."
Shirley had previously revealed she "heard" her late brother talking to her while she was struggling with altitude sickness on Kilimanjaro.
She said: "I was having panic attacks. My nose started to bleed. I was vomiting. And then my mind and senses lost control. You can’t control the emotions. I was crying over David, I was blaming myself. I was going back through all the years in my life, I was thinking I am not worthy. Every negative emotion I ever had in my life, whether it be the husbands who were not great to me, or David, or my father, were all coming on that mountain. And I can only put it down to the altitude. It plays tricks on your mind. One day when we were climbing really quite far up, because of the altitude I felt I could hear my brother talking to me. I was overwhelmed with how tired I was. You start to become disorientated. I felt I could hear my brother going, ‘Shirley’. It was really strange. But I had to remember I was doing this for David and anybody who’s got mental health issues."
Shirley Ballas climbed Mount Kilimanjaro for her brother
