Shirley Ballas on Growing Up Without a Dad | GREAT MOMENTS

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2:17Shirley Ballas: Hello everyone, I'm Jamie Lang and this is Great Moments. Guys, how are you doing? I hope you're well. Welcome back to another Great Moments. Now, today's Great Moment is with strictly legend Shirley Ballas. Okay, she's an icon. We can all put our hands up and say Shirley is an icon. And when she came on Great Company, it was kind of a really special conversation. That's why we wanted to bring this little moment back. Now, I love speaking to people about where they came from. It tells you so much about what's made them the person they are today. And Shirley, I mean, she shared so much about her childhood, what it was like growing up without a dad, and being raised by a strong mother who taught her so much.

2:54Shirley Ballas: Now, we talk about trust, independence, and how important it is to open up and let people see the real you. So here it is. It's our great moments with Shirley Ballas.

3:14Shirley Ballas: Where did you grow up?

3:16Jamie Laing: I grew up in a place called Wallasey, which is just across the river from Liverpool, so the north of England. and on a housing estate with a single mom and a brother. And times were very, very tough when we were little. You know, my mother is my, she's my queen. She is the true queen. She lives with me, you know, and I just love her to bits. What an amazing, amazing woman she is.

3:42Shirley Ballas: How tough was it growing up?

3:44Jamie Laing: Well, I think when you don't have a father influence in your life, at the time you don't realize so much, but the other kids used to make fun of you. So you were the two kids that were getting the free school dinners and the other children would stand at the gate and say, you don't have a dad, you're on welfare. And they, you know, really quite mean to us. But I always took things, even my mom said from a young child, I'd be thinking, oh, I'm getting a free hot lunch here. It was awful for my brother. He struggled with it. You know, he didn't want to go for the free dinners. And I would say the kids were generally a little bit mean.

4:17Jamie Laing: Some of them were nice, but there was always that stigma attached to the fact that you were you know with a single mother

4:23Shirley Ballas: and no father that's a strange thing for kids to attack I think kids get what they hear at home you know and I think most of them were um came from that unit of having moms and dads and brothers

4:36Jamie Laing: and sisters as well my mom she was the one that had to go she was the breadwinner very proud my mother and she had so many jobs just so that we could always have the best school uniforms clothes were always pressed and she did the best with the means that she had. So I think that, you know, it was just difficult times all round back then, I think.

4:56Shirley Ballas: What do you think it does? Because growing up without a dad, your dad left when you were two, right? What is the difference to having such a strong mother, but an absent father? What do you think that does to a young girl?

5:08Jamie Laing: I think it was only years later that I used to look at my best friend, Karen. I've got a friend of over 50 years and she had that solid unit. And I used to look at her when the dad would be making a fuss of her, you know, and he'd be with her at all the competitions. And I used to think, what's it like to have somebody that you're their queen, you know, a dad always revolves around their daughters and little girls is my observation. So I would say it was later on in life that I struggled with it far more than when I was little. Of course, I had my mother there. She taught me work ethic. She had four jobs at one time, I remember, just to make ends meet.

5:44Jamie Laing: You name it, she did it. She wasn't proud. She did whatever she had to do to make it work for the family so that we could eat every week and have nice clean clothes.

5:53Shirley Ballas: What does that teach you about work ethic?

5:55Jamie Laing: Well, what I've realized through my life, I was one of those people that I would say had above average talent, but my work ethic was off the chart. So if you worked four hours, I'd be the one working eight. And I think I've never been late for anything in my life. I've never missed a flight, you know, being on time, all these things for my life, making sure my private lessons, I was there on time, making sure I never lost my shoes because I only had one pair. Nothing in life is for free. You know, paying it forward was another thing that I learned from her. So some great lessons from her along the way, you know.

6:31Shirley Ballas: Would you say no father has potentially impacted your relationships in your life? I would say my relationships have been a disaster all the way along the line, all the way.

6:44Jamie Laing: But having said that, and this is only from my perspective, I'm still friendly with Nigel Tiffany, who was my first fiance at 16. He's my financial advisor today. I left and then I ran off with this guy called Sammy Stockford and we went right to the top in the dancing and then I left. And then I went to America and I married Corky, 22 years there, and then I left. Um, and then I've had a couple of boyfriends and that all ended in disaster. And then currently as I've just split with my boyfriend six years. So I don't really know, you know, I look back and I never had that example of that, uh, family environment, you know, and I, I look at other people and I love it when I see that there's still the mom and the dad and the kids and they all get there.

7:26Jamie Laing: But what I am truly grateful is that at 87, I still have my mother, you know, and that she lives with me and I get these precious moments with her because she's the only thing the only thing that's been a staple in my life.

7:39Shirley Ballas: Wow.

7:39Jamie Laing: No friend, no marriage, no nothing. She's been the main staple in my life. And other than that, my son. And I have one or two good friends. I have a very small circle of people around me. I'm not the most trusting person at all. And I think that all comes from, you know, the childhood and the ups, the downs and having to do, I mean, I used to travel from age 10 all over the country on buses and trains while all the other kids, moms and dads took them, you know, and cars and things. No one ever asked me if I needed a ride or can we help you? So it was really fending for yourself from that age. And I mean, my dad could have bellied up and he could have said, oh, I can do this or I can do that.

8:20Jamie Laing: He never did anything, not even bought me a pair of dance shoes. So when he passed away two years ago and his sister said, you know, I think you should fight to get this, this and this. And I was like, why would he never gave me anything while I was alive? Why would I fight for something when he's passed. Wow. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So I think it just makes you a little bit hardened on the inside. I did care for my dad. I mean, you only get one dad and throughout the years I did see him occasionally, but nothing that was like deep. We never talked about ever how I felt, you know, and he never asked me either.

8:52Shirley Ballas: So when he died, were you sad?

8:55Jamie Laing: I went to the funeral and I tried to talk to my mom about it. I had very mixed emotions because I I think when somebody's like, I couldn't, I'll get emotional just talking about this. I couldn't imagine losing my mother. That to me, I've been with that woman through ups, through downs, through her cancer, through the suicide of my brother, through just everything in my life. Now her, I couldn't imagine losing. That will be very traumatic for me. But I felt that, you know, because he'd passed. But like I say, I never had that girl-dad relationship, you know. and they told me after he passed you know your dad really did love you well it was a shame I didn't hear it from him you know maybe in passing he might have said I love you but words to me don't mean a lot actions mean a lot to me so and you know anyone listening family they always you know could give it large there but the thing is they don't live in my life and they don't live in my shoes and they never lived that childhood you know so so do you think you find

9:57Shirley Ballas: it hard to talk about things because, how do I explain this? You're so in the public eye and you're a judge on one of the biggest shows in the UK and everyone has an opinion and whatever anyone ever says or talks about, there are always people who hit back with certain things. Oh, you're not right here. There's always criticism, whatever you do, whatever you say, you, everyone else. So do you find it hard to be vulnerable and be open in certain situations?

10:26Jamie Laing: when I first got the job on Strictly Come Dancing in 2017 and my son who's been in television as you know Jamie or pretty much all his life he watched the first series and he said to me if you don't drop your walls and the barrier that you have around you I'm going to get emotional again he said you you're far too he said that it's stopping right here and you've got to let those walls down and you've got to share your experiences and I think also in 2017 I was having such a bad time with press. You know, there was another time I remember that my mum had a friend came in and she had all the pictures of my brother on the wall and they sold those pictures to the press.

11:05Jamie Laing: You know, so 2017 was a very guarded place for me at the time and just people coming out the woodwork, selling stories that weren't true. In 2018, we decided that perhaps it wasn't right for me to take the job back. And again, my son stepped in and he said to my mother, I know you've had a lot of press and everything between the two of you, but maybe you should focus more on your charity work. And that's hence when I thought, okay, I'll spend 40 % of my time dedicating it to the Suicide Foundation, Calm, Campaign Against Living Miserably, McMillan for Cancer, Alderay Children's Hospital, Centerpoint, all the different charities that I'm involved in.

11:44Jamie Laing: Hence, that's why I took it back in 2018. but I think over the years I think I've learned to drop a little bit more and I've never talked really about my father in any interview really a little bit but around the edges never really that deep feeling that it leaves a girl a young girl that could have done with a dad there you know while I was growing up actually even I look back and you know my brother he needed a man in his life I felt we had we had a guy that kind of stepped in every now and again my auntie Mavis his husband but he didn't have that father son role model there was no role model there for my brother and I felt sad for that years later when you look back on your life you know I felt you know had he have just even just stepped up he was that kind of dad that we get ready on a Sunday he might say I'm coming to get the kids on a Sunday my mama gets all ready in the little council flat you know best clothes on standing by the window never turned up over and over and over again and then oh yeah yeah yeah you know me mom would go to the little corner phone box and let him have it because that's what she does and and he would say oh I don't worry I've got the gifts are in the mail never received a gift never got a Christmas gift never got a Christmas card or a birthday card or you know I can remember you know you remember things in your life I remember one time when he eventually did pick us up and he said his mother was going to cook us this dinner we turned up at the door she didn't even know we were coming so I remember that they had to share out this roast dinner that had probably been made for like three people that suddenly now you've got an extra four I never got a roast potato by the way I've never forgotten that it was divvied out and even as a small child you just got that feeling that you no one knew you were coming so it was things like that and they were very few and far between he visited me another time in yorkshire when i moved there when i was 15 um yeah so it wasn't the greatest of relationships should we say let me rephrase that it'll always be my dad but it wasn't a deep relationship that we could

13:49Shirley Ballas: share things with you know shall they say funny what as kids what we remember you do when you were as a my point is as children when you're promised something you think it's real and especially from your parents?

14:00Jamie Laing: Well, as I've grown older now, there's several things I don't do. So lessons in life, you can play the victim and you can say, well, I'm like that because of this, or you can look at the situation and think, I will never be like that. So I've never been like that. So if I make a promise to the best of my ability, I will carry it through. If I see somebody needs help, I will be the person that there to try my best to help. And I never had that attitude with my own son or, you know, anybody I helped raise along the way. So the lesson I learned from him is that's not the person I ever want to be.

14:36Shirley Ballas: Shirley, thank you so much. Shirley is the best. That was an amazing, great moment. Now, what I loved about this episode was I loved how her mom taught her about work ethic and how it stayed with her her whole life. That's kind of amazing. Always be prepared. Always give all and never, ever give up. Always one foot in front of the other. I absolutely love that. You can see that in everything she does, that determination to show up properly. Now, if you liked that episode, you need to check out Shirley's full episode. We're going to leave a link in the show notes, so you just go and click on it.

15:02Shirley Ballas: Shirley is just one of the many amazing guests we've had on Great Company. So if you haven't already, make sure to check out all of them because there's so many of them. Okay, don't forget to follow and subscribe and we'll be back next week for a brand new episode of Great Company.

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