Ed Balls relived his emotional 2023 interview with Gareth Gates on Tuesday after the former Pop Idol winner returned to the Good Morning Britain studio for a chat about his speech impediment.
Gates overcame a debilitating stammer before qualifying a as a speech coach and course instructor with the McGuire Programme, a stuttering treatment course designed for people over the age of 14.
Discussing his stammer on Tuesday, the singer, 39, was shown a year old clip of a previous appearance on Good Morning Britain, during which presenter Balls, 57, broke down while recalling his own struggles with a speech impediment.
The former Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families welled up 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 too. And if he can be public, I can be public too. It was really hard, but I did it because you showed me how to do it,”‘ Balls told him.
Ed Balls relived his emotional 2023 interview with Gareth Gates on Tuesday after the former Pop Idol winner returned to the Good Morning Britain studio for a chat about his stammer
In a clip that originally aired in November 2023, Balls and Gates embraced after discussing their separate struggles with speech impediments
Reid eventually encouraged the pair to hug after realizing her co-host was crying, telling him: ‘Nothing to be ashamed of. It’s to be proud of – it’s part of your identity, isn’t it! [Gareth] broke the ground for you, didn’t he, Ed? There we go, Gareth, that’s what you did.
Gates added: ‘You’re a role model for me now! For you to be doing this is really incredible.’
The presenter and former Labour cabinet minister has previously spoken about his ‘decade-long struggle’ with a stammer, which saw him famously mocked by David Cameron in the Commons in 2012.
Talking to Gates in November 2023, Balls described him as an ‘inspiration’ after he was unveiled as the winner of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Gates added: ‘I’ve proved to people you can have an affliction and don’t let it dictate who you are. You’re able to achieve whatever you want in life. You just have to be strong.
‘My speech is massively affected if I’m tired, stressed. Under pressure. That’s the nature of the show [Celebrity SAS] – to push you to your limits. It was hard. I’m much more confident now. I got quite a lot out of the show’.
The singer, who was runner-up in the first series of the ITV talent show Pop Idol in 2002, went on to say that he was ‘pleased’ to have a stammer when he was finding fame.
He said: ‘It made me stand out from the crowd. I was actually pleased I had a stammer!
The former Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families welled up 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 is a battle every day. You aren’t able to be the person you want to be. You’re held back by your affliction. It’s made me a lot stronger person.’
Ed first revealed he had struggled with a stammer in an 2011 article with the Times, revealing he faced a daily battle to deliver his words and had to memorise all his speeches because he could not read a script.
In an attempt to overcome his stammer, Balls said he memorised 15 speeches a week and when he appears to have forgotten his lines, it is just that his voice has frozen.
He said at the time: ‘You just have to be yourself whatever you do. It doesn’t cause me a problem as Secretary of State, although there are times when it is tough.
‘The worst thing you can do is try and stop it. That’s when you trip up. It happens to me on live TV.
‘Some people speak without notes because they think it looks better. Some people do it because they think it leads to a better speech. But I can’t read the words out.’
Gates, who was runner-up in the first series of the ITV talent show Pop Idol in 2002 (pictured left, with Will Young right), said he was ‘pleased’ to have a stammer when he was finding fame
At the time, the British Stammering Association announced that Balls had become a patron of the association. Its chief executive, Norbert Lieckfeldt, commended him for talking about his stammer in public.
He later admitted he didn’t know he had one until he was ‘already in the Cabinet’ and found out he had issues speaking publicly in certain situations.
During an interview with the Independent in 2021, he said: ‘When I was selected to be an MP in 2004, I spoke to my dad after BBC Any Questions? and he said, ‘You’ve got the same as me but I don’t know what it is’.
‘I spent two or three years trying to find out what it was and trying to work out how to handle the fact that sometimes my speeches dried up in TV interviews and in the House of Commons.’
In 2016, Balls spoke frankly about his ‘decade-long struggle’ with a stammer and how then-Prime Minister David Cameron’s taunts led him to go public with his affliction.
The former shadow chancellor said he was not actually diagnosed with the condition – which caused him to seize up 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 jeering from the Commons front bench – and nicknamed him ‘Blinky Balls’.
The jibes eventually persuaded Ed to publicly reveal his problem – at first in a newspaper article, and then in a radio interview after which, he admits, the ‘tears welled up’.
