Silent rise of Britain’s Got Talent winner
Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at six months old, comedian Lee Ridley has never let the fact that he can’t speak get in the way of his stand-up success
WHEN Lee Ridley was crowned winner of this year’s Britain’s Got Talent contest on ITV on Sunday night it was a triumph not just for the comedian from County Durham but also for disabled people and their families everywhere.
For Ridley, whose stage name is Lost Voice Guy, has the neurological condition cerebral palsy and can only “speak” using a voice synthesiser. He pre-programs his stand-up routines on to it via his tablet computer, which he takes on stage with him.
Wearing a blue T-shirt emblazoned with the words “I was disabled before it was popular”, his sparkling – and self-deprecating – wit left viewers of the BGT final in stitches and netted the 37-year-old a cheque for £250,000.
Last night his grandmother Ethel Foster, 91, couldn’t contain her excitement. “When he decided to enter BGT we were all so proud of him just for doing it – because there’s nothing he won’t try.
“If anyone said to him ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to do that’ his response would be ‘Yes, I can man’. But not for a second did any of us think we’d be watching him win it.
“I am such a bag of nerves from watching the final but it’s brought us such happiness.”
Although viewers were momentarily startled when Ridley stepped on to the stage with grazes on his face and a plaster on his nose after a fall at his hotel last week, he simply used the incident as added material for his hilarious routine.
Judge David Walliams described his performance, during which Ridley deliberately played on his disabilities and inability to speak, as “one of the best stand-up routines I’ve seen – let alone on this show”. As the first comedian to win BGT – and the first in the world to use a communication aid – it’s predicted he’ll now earn millions. After being announced as the winner, Ridley told the show’s host Declan Donnelly: “I have been blown away by the support of the judges and public. I’ve had so much love from everyone and I’m grateful for it all.”
When Donnelly mentioned his prize included doing his set for the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance in November he said: “I am very excited to perform in front of the Queen. I’ve loved her since she sang Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Ridley had been the bookies’ favourite to win from the 11 acts in the final and bagged 21 per cent of the 2.5 million public votes, beating fellow comedian Robert White into second place and 60-year-old singer Donchez Dacres into third. The son of a cancer nurse and a sales rep, Ridley was born in Consett and diagnosed with cerebral palsy aged six months after running a high fever. He lost his voice as a young child but far from being self-pitying he chose to use his now famous humour to deal with his disabilities. He said recently of his cerebral palsy: “It means I can’t speak and my right side is weaker than my left. So I walk funny too. I also developed epilepsy as a teenager. Obviously I didn’t have enough to cope with.”
He has spoken candidly of a difficult childhood when he had to go to a special school 40 minutes away, so rarely played with the local children. He said: “I felt quite isolated. Luckily I had my Amiga 500 to keep me entertained! I had to rely on my parents to translate for me. You don’t want your mum there when you’re trying to chat up a girl!”
Ridley trained as a journalist, gained a degree and a Masters from the University of Central Lancashire, then worked on local newspapers in Cumbria and the North-east, as well as in the communications team at Sunderland City Council.
Yet his heart lay in making people laugh and in 2012 he began touring the comedy circuit in the North-east, quickly gaining legions of fans with his unique act. The same year he turned up – tongue in cheek – at The X Factor auditions, typed the lyrics to R Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly into his iPad, then stood back and mimed.
He went on to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and won the coveted BBC Radio New Comedy Award in 2014, a feat previously achieved by big comic names including Alan Carr. He also cowrote BBC Radio 4 series Ability, a semi-autobiographical comedy about a man with cerebral palsy who can only communicate through his tablet, penned with comedian Katherine Jakeways. He has said: “Disabled comedians provide something different. Instead of just a person telling jokes followed by another person telling jokes – that can get quite stale.”
But it was after a chance conversation with fellow Geordie and cult comedian Ross Noble, a regular on Have I Got News For You and QI, that Ridley’s star as a funnyman really began to rise.
He reportedly approached Noble after watching one of his shows and challenged him to a competition over who could do the best Stephen Hawking impression, a nod to his voice synthesizer.
NOBLE was so impressed that he ended up asking Ridley to become his warm-up act and was one of the first to congratulate him on his BGT win, tweeting: “So pleased a comedian has finally won #BGT and a Geordie comic at that. Congratulations to @LostVoiceGuy well deserved.” He has gone on to be the support act for other wellknown comics such as Patrick Kielty and Jason Manford and has been described by Matt Lucas as “a wonderful comedian”.
As for his personal life it’s not known whether Ridley has a girlfriend, although on his Instagram page there are pictures of him with a brunette woman he describes as “my invisible one”.
He’s previously talked about his frustrations at literally being unable to “chat up” women, saying he has to “type them up” instead. “There’s nothing sexy about being typed up,” he said. “Even if there was, most people tend to judge on looks alone, they’ve already made their minds up about this disabled guy in front of them before I’ve managed to say a word.”
In fact he once joked that the only person he’d ever said “I love you” to was former Newcastle United and England legend Alan Shearer – who is patron of the Alan Shearer Centre, a free facility for disabled children and adults in Newcastle. Shearer returned the affection after the BGT final by tweeting to Ridley: “The biggest win in the toon for decades! Congratulations @LostVoiceGuy from all of us at @AlanShearerFndn.”
Posting on social media the morning after the final, Ridley shared a photo with the words “It wasn’t a dream then?! #bgt”, and captioned a video clip of Donnelly announcing him as the winner as “the moment my life changed”.
When he first auditioned for BGT he might well have been, in his own words “disabled before it was popular”. But with more than 10 million viewers tuning in to see him win – there’s no doubt the Lost Voice Guy’s inimitable brand of humour is doing the talking now.