Strictly's Shirley Ballas charity skydive after brother's suicide

Shirley Ballas will do a Skyathlon challenge - a zipline, a 700ft wing walk and 15,000ft skydive

Strictly's Shirley Ballas is embarking on a trio of challenges to raise money for a suicide prevention charity after her brother took his own life.

She will do a Skyathlon challenge - a zipline, a 700ft wing walk and 15,000ft skydive throughout the week.

The Strictly Come Dancing judge said even though she was scared of heights, she was "more terrified at the thought of losing another person to suicide".

Ballas said suicide leaves "a hole in your heart that will never go away".

Her brother David took his own life in 2003 at the age of 44, leaving her and her mother "absolutely devastated".

She is now working with mental health charity CALM - the Campaign Against Living Miserably - to raise awareness.

She said last year she "struggled" on social media after being trolled.

"It does affect you," she said. Social media "can be a great platform on one hand" but it can also be "very dark".

To the point she has now employed "a young man to sift through my social media before I even get to it" to avoid reading potentially offensive messages.

Shirley Ballas's brother David took his own life in 2003 at the age of 44

Ballas, who grew up on Merseyside, told BBC North West Tonight she was doing the charity challenge "because I don't want anybody at all out there to experience what my mother and I have experienced".

"I want people to talk about the way they feel I want people to really reach out if they're struggling and CALM is the best place to go," she said.

"I just don't like to see people suffer one second longer than they have to."

She said Strictly had given her a "platform" to reach people "who are suffering".

"People are sharing their stories with me and it is gut-wrenching," she said.

"Tragedy is such an awful, awful thing.

"Sometimes when I'm sitting in Strictly, some tune will come up like Moon River or a tune that my brother and I loved and I can feel myself getting overwhelmed because it comes at times when you least expect it, he's there in the forefront of my mind."

"So I want to do this for every single person out there.

"I'm sixty-two and I'm not dead yet.

"I want to try things and challenges and this seemed the perfect thing for all the people who have somebody who's struggling."

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