Gareth Gates and Ed Balls on stammering

22nd October 2024

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – episode 129

Presented by Emma Tracey

EMMA-               Hello, and welcome to Access All, the BBC’s disability and mental health podcast. I’m Emma Tracey, and this time, I want you to prepare for some celebrity chat. I am talking to singer and Pop Idol star Gareth Gates, and ex-Labour cabinet minister turned Strictly star turned TV presenter,  Ed Balls, and we’re chatting all about stammering. 22 October is International Stammering Awareness Day, and according to a poll by British charity Stamma, about 3 per cent of us stammer. This interview is full of absolutely fascinating details about stammering and about Ed and Gareth. For example, did you know that there are two different types of stammer? I did not. They also give us some tips on getting past those blocks that happen when you have a stammer. It’s really positive, upbeat, interesting, charming chat, and I really, really hope you enjoy it. Y

MUSIC-               Theme music.

EMMA-               What do Emily Blunt, King George VI and Ed Sheeran have in common? Now, you might not know this but they all stammer. Stammering is a neurological condition which impacts your speech. People who stammer might struggle to say certain words or get stuck on a sound. Now, last year Gareth Gates and Ed Balls were on Good Morning Britain on ITV chatting about how having a stammer impacts their lives, and now they’re here to talk to me. Hi both.

ED-                      Hello.

GARETH-           Hello.

EMMA-               Hello. It was more than just a chat for you Ed though, wasn’t it?

ED-                      It was really emotional. And I never quite know when talking about stammering is suddenly going to catch me by surprise. And I was saying to Gareth that he was one of the very first people with a stammer who I saw talking about it and succeeding with it.

EMMA-               And Gareth, what was it like being a role model for Ed Balls? [Laughter] he used to be the shadow chancellor.

ED-                      He’s appalled by the idea!

GARETH-           I try to mention my speech and my stammer as often as I can, and it’s for that very reason. Lots of people come up to me and say, you inspired me to never hold back, I share the same affliction as you of stammering and yeah, you kind of broke the mould as it were. And I try to do that as often as I can because if you can reach one person and help to change one person’s life then it’s all worth it I guess.

EMMA-               Yeah, your appearance on Pop Idol had a massive impact on me and my friends and everyone at that time. Gareth, what’s your first memory of stammering?

GARETH-           I’ve always stammered, from uttering my f-first words it was tough and it was difficult. And growing up was very, very hard; being different in a classroom is hard. I’d have bullies on top of me in the playground saying, well let’s beat the words out of him and, you know, those scars still stick with you. But fortunately I found another outlet, I found that music meant I could get the words out of my mouth and I could finally express myself, so that became my s-saving grace really. It was extremely tough as a child but I’m very, very fortunate that I found music I think.

EMMA-               And you talked about the struggle that you had at school on Who Dares Wins, which is an amazing show where guests go through SAS training. Here’s a clip of that:

[Clip]

GARETH-           Um, for me, um, um, um, um, um, growing up was hard. Um, um…

STAFF-               What, family life you mean?

GARETH-           No, no. School, um, you know, having a stammer, um, school was hard. [Starts crying] Come on, god, just, oh, um, verbally abused.

[End of clip]

EMMA-               Are you angry about what happened to you as a child, Gareth?

GARETH-           No, I’m, I’m not angry. Um, you know, it’s, it’s hard to hear that, it really is, and, you now, to go back there. But it’s made me the person I am now; it’s made me the stronger, much m-more resilient person that I am now. And in a sort of odd way I’m the other side of it, I’m actually quite th-thankful that I went through that hardship as a child.

EMMA-               Yeah. Ed Balls, there are two types of stammering, aren’t there? I mean, I didn’t know this but there are.

ED-                      There are and I didn’t know that either. Mine’s what they call a covert or an interiorised stammer. So, Gather’s is an overt exteriorised stammer, which means he st-st-st-stammers when he speaks, it’s public and verbal. Whereas mine is what very many people have which is more like a block. So, when you’re speaking sometimes, and especially if you’re under pressure or you are in an exposed situation or if you are speaking publicly suddenly the words [pauses] don’t come and you block on your words. And inside there is a big stammer happening but it’s not something which you can hear, but it’s something which the stammer it is ringing loudly in your ears this thing which is happening. And I didn’t find out that I had this interiorised stammer until I started to do national media, Any Questions, BBC News channel, Channel 4 News, and then in parliament as a junior minister once I was elected as an MP. And sometimes it would just go wrong and I couldn’t get the words out and I’d get stuck.

EMMA-               You definitely had some challenging moments whilst speaking in parliament, including former Prime Minister David Cameron being kind of less than kind:

[Clip]

ED-                      The chancellor has confirmed government borrowing is revised up this year, next year and every year. The national deficit is not rising…uh, uh, uh, is rising [mocking laughter and jeering], not falling. The national debt is…

DAVID-               And with innovative ways of using our hard-won credibility which we wouldn’t have if we listened to the muttering idiot sitting opposite me [mocking laughter and jeering].

[End of clip]

EMMA-               That’s really hard to hear, particularly the second half of it. Did David Cameron apologise?

ED-                      No, he didn’t apologise. And he also on a different occasion kind of suggested that I had Tourette’s Syndrome as well. I think he just didn’t understand what was going on, and he would hear those things now and be hugely regretful. Part of my journey was, um, to, to go public. It took me a long time to decide to do that, to start to speak publicly. I needed that for myself because that would relieve the pressure, if I knew that if people knew I had a stammer that made me less likely to stammer. The fact that you know I have a stammer means that I’m less likely to stammer in this interview. But that is also about other people starting to understand what’s really happening. And I think in life with any kind of disability or difference sometimes when people don’t understand and they’re a bit bewildered and they might be a bit embarrassed, and as a result they sort of try to front that out with bravado. And I think that that was what was going on there. And I think once David Cameron knew I think he did act in a very different way. But it took quite a lot of years for him to, to understand that.

EMMA-               Yeah, which is hard going for you. Do you think things have got better?

ED-                      Well, they certainly got better for me because I went public, and I spoke to the Speaker of the House of Commons. In the first instance when I was there it was John Bercow. And I had letters from MPs apologising. The trouble with an interiorised stammer is that they don’t always understand, so they can think that you are not confident or that you’ve forgotten or that you have been destabilised.

One of the worst moments for me, actually that day in the House of Commons when I stammered during my response to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement, and that evening Nick Robinson, the BBC political editor who knew I had a stammer, said on the 10 o’clock news that some Conservative MPs were saying Ed Balls wasn’t confident in his arguments. And I rang him and said, ‘Nick, it’s my stammer, you know that. You can’t call that a lack of confidence. I’m not nervous’. And the next morning in this very building Sarah Montague, presenting the Today programme, I was down the line in Millbank, and she said, ‘Lots of your own side would have thought you weren’t confident, you were losing the argument’, and I had this moment and I thought, I can’t, I can’t accept this. So, I said, ‘Sarah look, I have a stammer. Sometimes I’m not fluent, especially when I’m being yelled at by 300 people. But I’m not going to apologise for that. It’s part of who I am and I’m carrying on doing my job as best as I can’. I came out of the Today programme studio, I thought why have I said this. I was in tears. Five minutes later I’m back on BBC Breakfast going through the same thing. And it was a searing experience actually, but I had such a massive response of people saying, you know, good, say it, speak up, it's what we want to hear, we want to understand. And I think as a consequence of those times not only did I get treated differently I hope, as Gareth was saying, that we contributed to people more widely starting to understand what this thing called a stammer is and maybe people are less likely to hector or bully or scorn now than they might have been ten years ago.

EMMA-               Are there times, Gareth, when your stammer is more pronounced and times when it’s less pronounced?

GARETH-           Yeah. If I’m stressed, if I’m tired, in more stressful situations. Obviously l-live on TV is, is, is hard for me at times. The more that I do it it becomes more of a comfort zone, so I try to push myself to do interviews more or things like this, which is very, very easy to turn down but I, I try to be as f-forceful on myself. I’m part of a speech therapy programme called The Maguire Programme, and they teach that the only way for the f-fear to go down is to face that fear head on. On the course that we go on we have to go out and introduce ourselves to 100 people out on the street, 100 strangers; which for anybody is hard work, you know.

EMMA-               It sounds stressful!

GARETH-           Yeah, it really is. Then we have to do public speaking in the m-middle of the town centre. It’s only by forcing yourself to do things that you f-fear the most, you know, that you can start to get a grip and a hold of this, this thing that’s controlled you for all your, you know, for all your life.

EMMA-               I mean, you have a speech coach in your eyeline in this room.

GARETH-           I do.

EMMA-               Is that not seriously stressful? What is he doing over there in the corner?

GARETH-           [Laughs]

EMMA-               Do you know what I mean? You have to think about him, you’re thinking about us, you know.

GARETH-           He’s constantly waving at me to slow down. My default is to speak too fast and to try and race over my words. But I, I find that that often trips me up. He’s, he’s, he’s here because he’s part of the same programme I’m on, and just having him present reminds me of what I need to be doing and techniques that I’m supposed to be using.

EMMA-               But is it not easier to be more natural than to be trying to use techniques all the time?

GARETH-           I can guarantee if he, if he wasn’t here I’d, I’d have barely got out one sentence [laughs].

EMMA-               Now, when you sing you don’t stammer the song. Could you not just sing your way through life, you know, just sing your interview questions?

GARETH-           Yeah, well I’ve never struggled with, with singing. But I haven’t had the negative association with singing as I’ve had with my speech. I’ve always had a great reaction to singing whenever I’ve sang. And often as well when we’re on stage we adopt a different persona. When I’m on stage and I’m singing I’m G-Gareth Gates the popstar, Gareth Gates the singer and, you know, wearing that mask often helps. I’ve, I’ve done lots of West End shows where I’ve, I’ve had to learn script and, and acting where I’m playing a different character. You know, there’s never an issue with my speech there either.

EMMA-               Really? So, if you’re saying lines there isn’t…?

GARETH-           Yeah.

EMMA-               And I hear you spoke to Rowan Atkinson, another stammerer about this and about speaking roles in musicals, what did he say to you?

GARETH-           He just told me and encouraged me to, um, to never give up. And, um, you know, he cast a bit of insight on, you know, when he plays a role he’s absolutely fine because he’s not, um, h-himself. I find it hard to talk about myself, but in a, in a character if I’m walking in a different way, breathing in a different way, embodying somebody in a different way I’m fine with my speech which is, which is odd.

ED-                      Definitely.

EMMA-               Is that the same for you when you’re in character, Ed? I mean, you’re not an actor, but being a politician or an ex-politician, and being a presenter as well, there’s kind of character acting in that.

ED-                      There was a TV show in the 1980s with Jon Pertwee called Worzel Gummidge, and Worzel Gummidge was a scarecrow and he had different heads: he had a happy head, a sad head, an angry head. And I think in life, even when we’re being ourselves, you have to get the right head on. It’s not easy if you’re a politician to go up to people you don’t know in the streets and say hello and introduce yourself. It’s not easy to stand up in front of thousands of people and make a speech. But you have to have the right head on. You have to have the this is the period when I’m going to be the outward facing external projecting person. And all of us have I think often a shyness and a diffidence. And if that self is the person trying to make the speech or to say hello to people it’s going to be hard. So, you put on your performing head, your public head, and you know you can take it off in a bit and have a bit of a rest. And I don’t think that is any different if you are a popstar or an actor or just a person in their normal life: if you are needing to do a presentation at work, or if you are needing to speak up at a parents’ meeting it’s not an easy thing to do, but we all learn to put on the head which allows us to be that for that period. And I think for a stammerer that’s just a different way of doing the same thing: you put on your speaking head for a bit.

EMMA-               What happens if even in those situations you have a block? What are your strategies then for moving forward from that, like maybe on stage or in parliament or whatever?

ED-                      I have loads of techniques which I use. And any time I do something for the first time it’s hard. I always want familiarity. I always want to arrive at a venue ten minutes before and speak to people first. I use lots of launch words; I like to start a sentence with, ‘Look Emma, the important thing is…’ I want to get myself moving. I can’t stand any sentences which start with an H if I have to read them out. The Bible is very hard to read because you can’t change the words. And when I feel a block coming along, and I do all the time, I’ve learned to have the confidence to think it’s going to be fine, I’m going to ride this, and then I’ll just wait and then carry on. And I’ve learned that people aren’t going to notice that. Whereas before I was public and before I knew how to do that when I felt the block coming on I would panic and tauten up, and you could see it in my face. And that was when I became stressed and other people became stressed. The other thing is I always know now that I can say, ‘Sorry about that, a bit of a block, I’ve got a stammer’. And the fact that I know I can say it and I’m not worried about saying it, and if needed to I just would, is hugely relieving of pressure, which means I don’t have to say it. Whereas in the time when I thought I had to cover it up, I’ve done so many BBC interviews with John Sopel or with Laura Kuenssberg, when I wasn’t public about my stammer, and when I would block I could see the fear in their eyes because they’re thinking, ‘What’s happening? Why is he doing this?’. Whereas the fact that I now believe in my mind they know I’ve got a stammer means that I’m not going to worry about it and therefore I worry them less.

GARETH-           I think taking ownership is a huge, huge thing, and every time I do an interview I always do exactly the same as Ed does. I t-tell them, ‘Look, I’m constantly working on my speech here, and there’s a strong possibility in this interview I might stammer’. And by taking control of that and taking ownership of that it, it just massively lowers the fear.

EMMA-               And does it affect people’s relationships as well, and I suppose dating and all that as well?

ED-                      I’m not sure about dating [laughter]. I think I was already married before…

EMMA-               Did it affect you when you were dating, Gareth?

GARETH-           Yeah. I mean, trying to chat up a girl is, is hard work [laughter]. Yeah, it was always very, very nerve-wracking. I’d go on a date and, like, oh, just sort of hope for the best.

EMMA-               Did you have Chris at the next table, your coach, doing your miming in the restaurants?

GARETH-           [Laughs]

ED-                      Slow down, Gareth. Talk about her family, ask her, ask her…

GARETH-           Exactly [laughter]. I s-sent him home before I took her home though [laughter].

ED-                      I know there’s times when for a period I’ve not done something because I thought maybe I can’t. I said a no initially to Good Morning Britain because I thought with my stammer I won’t be able to do the autocue. But when I decided that’s ridiculous, have a go, roll the dice, I found, you know, not perfectly, but I can. You need as a person to have the confidence to say I’m going to try things which are hard and I’m going to be public about telling people this may be bumpy at times, but actually it’s going to be worth it for you. But that requires your manager, your employer to also think that’s okay. So, if you don’t have a supportive environment I think it’s much harder to do what we’re saying to people…

GARETH-           True.

ED-                      …which is to be yourself and be open.

EMMA-               And Gareth you’re pushing forward; what’s going on for you in the near future?

GARETH-           I’ve actually recently written a musical, which is all about stammering. It’s called Speechless. I, I think we’re about a year off until we actually see something on the stage. But I just wanted to try to educate people on what having a st-stammer really is like, you know, and the mindsets that come with that, you know, and the way that it does kind of craft and mould you into the person th-that you are. So, yeah, I’m…

EMMA-               That sounds like a lot of fun. And actually one of the things we didn’t talk about was humour. Have you got humorous musical songs about stammering now?

GARETH-           Yes. There’s a s-song that I’ve written and it st-starts with a guy that can’t say words beginning with B, so he’s, like, b-b-b. Then there’s a girl that can’t say words beginning with C so you get the b-c-b-c-b-c.

EMMA-               Oh, so the bee-bop thing.

ED-                      I can see where you’re going with that.

GARETH-           Then you get a guy who can’t say words beginning with T, so you get the higher, so [rhythmically] b-c-t, b-c-t, b-c-t. So, this whole song is created by people that can’t speak. And that’s the sort of comical part of the show, and that’s one of many songs.

EMMA-               It sounds brilliant, doesn’t it Ed? Can we go when it comes out?

ED-                      Look, this is a bit of a revelation for Gareth, so I don’t just want to go, but one of the great tragedies of my life, one of my great disappointments is that I was asked whether I would like to play, after I’d done Strictly, the Teen Angel role in the [pouring] show of Grease, singing the Frankie Valli song Beauty School Dropout. And I said no, and I’ve always regretted it. They got Jimmy Osmond instead.

EMMA-               Is this true?

ED-                      Totally true. And I’ve always thought to myself, there was one point where the BBC were talking about whether I would do a show called Balls to Broadway where I would go and show that as a total amateur you could play the wizard in Wicked or the king in Hamilton, that kind of role where you don’t have to be a great singer. So, Gareth if you need somebody with a stammer who’s willing to come along, not necessarily with great singing skills, but who will give it their all?

GARETH-           Ed, you’re hired.

ED-                      No way! I’m in [laughter].

EMMA-               You heard it here first, kids, you heard it here first.

ED-                      Excellent. You’ll have to write me a role.

GARETH-           Would you wear tights?

ED-                      I’ll wear anything you want. I mean, if I’m on the stage whatever. Have you not seen some of the things I’ve worn?

GARETH-           Yes, yes, I have.

ED-                      Oh come on, whatever you want, Gareth.

GARETH-           That’s brilliant.

EMMA-               That is absolutely brilliant. And if you need a blind character with no acting skills that would also be fine with me.

GARETH-           Okay, great.

EMMA-               A little sabbatical I’m sure.

GARETH-           Amazing.

EMMA-               Well, from the cast of Gareth’s new musical, Gareth Gates, Ed Balls and myself, thank you very much.

ED-                      Great to be here. Thank you very much.

MUSIC-              

EMMA-               I think you can tell that I had a mighty fine time with Ed and Gareth, they were totally charming guests. Listen, if you have something to say about this or anything else, you can contact us in all the usual ways. You can email accessall@bbc.co.uk, or you can go on the socials, Instagram or X and find us:  @BBCAccessAll. You can send us a message, a voice or a text, on WhatsApp, just put the word ‘Access’ before it, our number is 0330 123 9480. You can subscribe to us if you haven’t already, just go to BBC Sounds, search up Access All and hit that big ‘subscribe’ button, please do. See you next time. Bye.

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