THE SOUND OF YOUNG LOVE

THERE was no car or money, and Shirley had to travel to training sessions and contests alone.

When she was 15, she moved to Yorkshire so she could be paired up with the young British ballroom champion, Nigel Tiffany.

‘I just knew we didn’t have the resources,’ she says. ‘It was hard. I missed my mum and brother, but my focus was getting better at dance.’

Romance blossomed and she and Nigel got engaged when she was 16. ‘I remember my teacher telling me at 17: “Everybody [in dance] gets married.” And I said: “But we hardly know each other.’”

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound Of Music, Rolfe woos teenage Liesl in the Von Trapp gazebo with the song Sixteen Going On Seventeen, saying that he — aged 18 — will take care of her. Their romance comes to an end when Rolfe turns out to be a Nazi sympathiser.

For Shirley, her engagement with Nigel ended after she had a try out with dancer Sammy Stopford.