Help The Hungry: Shirley Ballas gives our campaign a 10 as she backs drive to tackle food poverty

‘Strictly Come Dancing’ judge quicksteps into the kitchen and swaps her paddle for a pinny to support our campaign. Arjun Neil Alim and Francesco Loy Bell report

Head judge on BBC One’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ Shirley Ballas and her partner Danny Taylor prepare and distribute food in conjunction with charities the Felix Project and With Compassion (Lucy Young)

Dancing queen Shirley Ballas gave our Christmas appeal 10 out of 10 as she joined The Independent to prepare and deliver meals to the vulnerable.

She hailed our campaign as “eye-opening” as she accompanied our charity partner, With Compassion, for a day of food preparation and delivery.

The Strictly Come Dancing head judge said: “It touches the heartstrings when you help people get a basic meal. I come from a council estate. I had free school dinners – I find it quite emotional.”

Ballas and her partner Daniel Taylor, who is an actor, visited the historic London Scottish House in Westminster – which has been lent to The Independent’s Help The Hungry appeal as a “dark” kitchen to produce meals for delivery.

The couple chopped multicoloured bell peppers for a chickpea stew and spinach and lentil wraps. With Compassion produces 1,000 meals per day in the kitchen, using fresh ingredients donated by The Felix Project, The Independent’s other charity partner.

Taylor, who received free school meals as a child and has experienced homelessness, said that he wanted to dispel the social stigma of receiving help.

“When we used to queue up for free dinners you’d feel a little bit inferior. You shouldn’t feel bad about struggling at the end of the day.”

The couple then travelled to deliver the meals to Living Way Ministries on the Grahame Park Estate, the largest housing estate in Barnet.

Living Way is a community centre that offers family support and a foodbank for the local community. A Barnet council assessment from last year estimates that half the children in Colindale, the district in which the estate is located, live in poverty, after housing costs.

Shirley and Danny help out at the Living Way Ministries community centre in Colindale, northwest London (Lucy Young)

Pastor Hope Yoloye, the charity’s founder, said: “Winter has a crisis of its own, especially for the elderly, for the disabled, young children. And then put Covid on top of it, it’s a double whammy.

“Every single one of us has a responsibility to be the voice for the voiceless and to be the hands to the withered, to be the legs to the lame so together the  world is a better place.”

Ballas and Taylor unloaded the hot meals and set up a table outside the centre where a queue of a few dozen had gathered. Andrea Koval, who helps support the local homeless population for the charity, explained that many of those in the queue lead normal lives that have been disrupted by the pandemic.

She said: “You don’t have to be homeless to be without any money. Because of Covid, a lot of people have lost their jobs or they can’t work as much. They need food.”

The Independent’s Help The Hungry campaign supplies meals to frontline charities, schools and individuals who have been affected by Covid-19 while aiming to establish a durable solution to the problem of food poverty.

Ballas remains hopeful that communities will rise to the challenge. “People have been checking on neighbours and communities and have really come together to help one another. I think the country was missing that.” 

This November and December we will be delivering food directly to 1,000 people a day through our partner With Compassion. Please donate here to help us do all we can to ensure no one goes hungry this Christmas.