How Ed Balls escaped hairy experience The shadow chancellor has, however, disclosed that the jokes used to be worse, because of what a former inamorata was called. "This is totally true: I had a girlfriend for five years with the last name Arie, so the double-barrelled name would have been bad - it sounded like 'Hairy Balls,"" the former Labour minister tells Mandrake. Balls, 46, does not give the first name of his ex-lover. In 1998, he married Yvette Cooper, 44, who is now the shadow home secretary and is seen as a potential Labour leader. They were the first married couple to serve together in the Cabinet. Their three children took their mother's surname because of Balls's concerns that they would be bullied. Speaking at a champagne reception to toast the centenary of the New Statesman magazine, at the Great Hall in Westminster, Balls suggests that his wife's surname may have been part of her attraction. "Cooper is safer," he admits. When I went on Question Time for the first ever time, on the website they've got comments and this guy puts a comment the next day, saying, 'Well done to Ed Balls for his performance last night, and for getting through his political career so far against such adversity. I'm thinking, 'What's this about? It was signed by a guy called Bob Nipple.