Shirley Ballas recalls Hawaii cruise slap from Audrey
shirley ballas says her mother Audrey smacked her round the face during breakfast on a cruise liner going around Hawaii after she started crying about a breakup. The recollection arrives as Ballas talks through the family background behind her public life, with Audrey now living with her in London and managing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Hawaii cruise breakfast
Ballas said, "I’d saved up for a long time to take her away, and we had the most remarkable time together." She said the trip turned sharply at breakfast one morning when she was upset about ending a relationship: "At breakfast one morning, I was crying, so she smacked me round the face."
Her response was immediate. "You bet your life I shut up after that," she said, before adding, "That’s old-school parenting, right there." The scene is blunt, but it also fits the way Ballas frames Audrey as the force who kept her moving early on, even when family life was already stretched thin.
Wallasey to Strictly
Born in Wallasey in 1960, Ballas said her parents divorced when she was two, leaving a household of her mother, herself and her brother. She said the children learned young how to make a roast dinner, shop for groceries and keep the house tidy, while Audrey worked multiple jobs so she could pursue dance classes.
At seven, Ballas first fell for dance after hearing music and seeing people dance the cha-cha-cha in a church hall. By 14, she had left home to live with the parents of her first dance partner, Nigel Tiffany, and stayed there until 16. She first married Sammy Stopford at 18 and married Corkey Ballas at 22; neither marriage lasted. She retired from competitive dancing in 1996, then joined the 's Strictly Come Dancing as a judge in 2017.
Audrey’s COPD
Audrey was diagnosed with COPD in 2022, and Ballas has said she has seen her mother coughing so much that she is choking. She also said Audrey is stubborn about the condition, a line that makes the London household feel less like a celebrity setup than a daughter trying to manage a difficult illness up close.
Ballas supports the Breathe Equal campaign with Sanofi to raise awareness of COPD and address stigma and inequalities in care. That gives her Hawaii story a sharper edge: the slap is a family memory, but the larger current is an ongoing health battle that now sits at the center of the pair’s daily life in London.
