Enough, says Strictly’s Shirley as troll hand-delivers abusive letter
STRICTLY judge Shirley Ballas has hit out at bullies after an abusive letter calling her a ‘gob ***** ’ was hand-delivered to the theatre where she is starring in pantomime.
Miss Ballas, 59, said the anonymous abuser had gone a step further than the trolls who attack her online.
She posted a photo of the letter about her performance as Mother Nature in Jack and the Beanstalk, which says ‘remove your head from your ******** ’. It concludes: ‘It was a very sad day when you were appointed a judge on Strictly.’
Miss Ballas responded: ‘Well I guess this will never end. Cowardly to just drop off at my place of work. All the judges on Strictly are there to do the best job we can.
‘Enough is enough now. Positive vibes for 2020 please.’
The foul-mouthed critic delivered the letter to the Hippodrome Theatre in Darlington, County Durham.
Miss Ballas said it was ‘upsetting to go and perform and then read this’.
But she told her followers to ‘be strong going into 2020’.
In a video message, the Strictly Come Dancing head judge said: ‘As we know I had quite a lot of bullying on Strictly this time and my Instagram inbox was full of horrific and horrendous messages. But this has gone a step further now and I’ve had a hand-delivered message. My message for anyone who receives awful messages from people who don’t know them is the issue is the other person’s issue, it’s not so much ours.’
Last year, the dancer revealed she had messages telling her to ‘die and go kill yourself’ from viewers.
‘I’ve had more online bullying this time than I’ve had in any series,’ she said. ‘My concern is not so much for myself, it’s for the younger people out there... if they do that kind of bullying online, what do they do at work, what do they do at school?’