Ed Balls revived his emotional 2023 interview with Gareth Gates on Tuesday after the former Pop Idol winner returned to the Good Morning Britain studio to chat about his speech impediment.
Gates overcame a debilitating stutter before qualifying as a speech coach and course instructor with the McGuire Program, a stuttering treatment course designed for people aged 14 and over.
On Tuesday, the singer, 39, was shown a year-old clip from a previous appearance on Good Morning Britain, during which presenter Balls, 57, broke down as he recalled his own struggles with a speech impediment.
The former Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families became emotional as he recalled his childhood battle with the issue while interviewing Gates with co-host Susanna Reid.
“You inspired me. I thought, ‘If Gareth Gates can do this, I can do this. And if he can be public, I can be public. It was very difficult, but I did it because you showed me how to do it,'” Balls told him.
Ed Balls revived his emotional 2023 interview with Gareth Gates on Tuesday after the former Pop Idol winner returned to the Good Morning Britain studio to chat about his stammer.
In a clip that originally aired in November 2023, Balls and Gates hugged after discussing their separate struggles with speech impediments.
Reid eventually encouraged the pair to embrace after realising his co-host was crying, telling him: ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s something to be proud of, it’s part of your identity, isn’t it? (Gareth) blazed the trail for you, didn’t he, Ed? There you go, Gareth, that’s what you did.
Gates added: “You’re now a role model for me! It’s really amazing that you do this.”
The presenter and former Labour cabinet minister has previously spoken about his “decade-long struggle” with his stammer, which earned him famous taunts from David Cameron in the House of Commons in 2012.
Speaking to Gates in November 2023, Balls described him as an “inspiration” after being revealed as the winner of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Gates added: “I’ve shown people that you can have a grief and not let it dictate who you are. You can achieve anything in life. You just have to be strong.”
“My speaking ability is massively affected if I’m tired, stressed or under pressure. That’s the nature of the show (Celebrity SAS) – pushing you to the limit. It was tough. I’m much more confident now. I learned a lot from the show.”
The singer, who came second in the first series of ITV talent show Pop Idol in 2002, went on to say he was “glad” to have a stutter when he was first finding fame.
He said: “It made me stand out from the crowd. I was actually glad I had a stutter!”
The former Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families became emotional as he recalled his childhood battle with the issue while interviewing Gates with co-host Susanna Reid.
Balls credited the singer and actor for “showing him how” to be in the public eye with a speech impediment.
“It’s a daily battle. You’re not able to be the person you want to be. Your grief holds you back. It’s made me a much stronger person.”
Ed first revealed that he had struggled with a stutter in a 2011 article with the Times, revealing that he faced a daily battle to get his words out and had to memorize all of his speeches because he couldn’t read a script.
In an attempt to overcome his stutter, Balls said he memorized 15 speeches a week and that when he seemed to have forgotten his lines, it was simply that his voice had frozen.
He once said: “You just have to be yourself, whatever you do. As Secretary of State, I don’t have any problems with that, although there are times when it is difficult.”
“The worst thing you can do is try to stop it. That’s when you stumble. It happens to me live on television.
‘Some people speak without notes because they think it makes them look better. Others do it because they think it makes their speech better. But I can’t read words out loud.’
Gates, who came second in the first series of ITV talent show Pop Idol in 2002 (pictured left, with Will Young right), said he was “glad” to have a stutter when he was first finding fame.
At the time, the British Stammering Association announced that Balls had become a patron of the association. Its chief executive, Norbert Lieckfeldt, praised him for speaking about his stammer in public.
He later admitted that he didn’t know he had one until “I was already in the Cabinet” and discovered he had trouble speaking publicly in certain situations.
During an interview with The Independent in 2021, she said: ‘When I was elected to be an MP in 2004, I spoke to my father after the BBC Any Questions? programme and he said: ‘You’ve got the same thing as me, but I don’t know what it is’.
“I spent two or three years trying to figure out what it was all about and trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that sometimes my speeches dried up in television interviews and in the House of Commons.”
In 2016, Balls spoke candidly about his “decade-long struggle” with stuttering and how taunts from then-Prime Minister David Cameron led him to go public with his affliction.
The former shadow chancellor of the exchequer said he was not actually diagnosed with the condition – which caused him to have seizures during speeches and debates – until he was 41.
In his book, Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics, he recalls how Cameron would lead the jeers from the front row of the House of Commons, nicknaming him ‘Blinky Balls’.
The taunts eventually persuaded Ed to reveal his problem publicly, first in a newspaper article and then in a radio interview, after which, he admits, “tears came to his eyes.”
