Shirley Ballas says mum’s struggle with lung condition ‘terrifying’

Strictly Come Dancing head judge Shirley Ballas said watching her mum struggle to breathe with a lung disease estimated to affect more than three million people in the UK was “terrifying”.

The Merseyside-born dancer said she had “never heard” of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which causes breathing difficulties, until her mother Audrey was diagnosed with it in 2022.

“My mum’s a smoker and over these last three years, I’ve got to witness her being out of breath,” she told BBC Radio Manchester.

“I’ve got to witness her being really poorly. I’ve been opposite her when she couldn’t get a breath and was choking because the airways closed.”

She said it was terrifying because she worked a lot and she worried about what might happen if her mother struggled to breathe when she was not there.

Ballas lives with and cares for her 88-year-old mother, who is attempting to quit smoking.

“I have to be really vigilant with her but she still goes about her daily duty,” she said. “She gets up, she gets ready – washing and ironing done by 11am.”

Ballas said there were “little stools all around the house for her to sit and catch her breath” during chores or while walking up the stairs.

She said the condition meant her mother becomes “nervous that if we go shopping – if she starts coughing – people are going stare at her”.

“So we only go out once a week now, it’ll be for two or three hours. She doesn’t care to go outside, she just prefers to be home which is kind of sad.”

Her mother has a nebulizer and puffer, Ballas said, but “getting her to use that is like pulling teeth”.

“She’s quite awkward, she’s quite stubborn but at the end of the day, she’s going to try to give up smoking if she can,” she said.

Ballas said she had an “A* relationship” with her mother, who took on four jobs so her daughter could learn to dance as a child.

She said: “She is queen bee. She’s the true queen of the house, shall we say, and I shall forever have true gratitude for everything that she’s done for me throughout my life.”

Ballas spoke to MPs and healthcare organisations at a House of Commons event earlier this week to lobby for more resourcing and awareness of COPD, which more than one million people have been diagnosed with.

Another two million people are estimated to be undiagnosed and Ballas said her “inbox is full of all sorts of stories” after she spoke publicly about her mother’s experiences.

Having grown up in a working-class environment, she is keen to raise awareness of COPD among deprived areas, where smoking and exposure to lower air quality has been more prevalent.

“Around the country, there’s little pockets in different areas where not everybody can get the care that they need,” she said.

She is now encouraging anybody with breathing difficulties to “insist” their doctor test if they have COPD “rather than just having the antibiotics”.

She said: “It’s not something you can see, but it’s definitely something that needs to be prioritised.”