BGT SIR GETS MICKEY TAKEN AT SCHOOL
Singing teacher’s brush with stardom
Amanda Holden said his voice was outstanding. Alesha Dixon called him an inspiration. Simon Cowell remarked on his kind heart. David Walliams was so blown away by his singing, he joked he might take off and zoom into outer space.
So it’s fair to say Tom Ball, a selfeffacing young music and drama teacher, is a big hit with the Britain’s Got Talent judges. Judging by their reaction, the audience felt the same way.
Tom’s rendition of Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst’s Rise Like A Phoenix, got a standing ovation from the judges and led to the public voting him through to tomorrow’s blockbuster final, making him one of the favourites to win.
No wonder then that Tom’s life has changed since his audition.
His status at the secondary school where he teaches in Croydon, Surrey, has gone from “newcomer” to “megastar”.
Tom, 24, says: “I was on duty the first morning after my audition aired and in the playground all the kids came up to me non-stop. Every lesson since then has started with a conversation about BGT.
“I think the other teachers have been even more excited than the kids.”
It was brave of Tom to put himself at the mercy of some of the harshest judges on TV, dressed in one of his three work suits. And it was arguably even braver to return to a school full of teenagers who are, by nature, talented mickey-takers.
Tom says: “They cottoned on to the fact David mis-heard my name as Mr Tumble. I have to say to them, ‘Come on now, you know it’s Mr Ball’.”
It’s this good-natured self-deprecation that made us all adore Tom. And it’s why he can laugh off being in the spotlight for something very personal: those incredible eyebrows. “Someone made a little gif just of my eyebrows, which is really funny,” he says.
“I knew they were big but I didn’t quite realise how much people might be drawn to them. They do move, a lot.
“It was always more my hair people talked about, because when I was in school it was massive.
“I used to brush it but that’s the worst thing you can do because that makes it
10 times bigger. Students used to hide pencils in my hair.”
Stylists behind the scenes at BGT, whose tweezers are twitching to give Tom a SuBo-style supergrooming, must stand down.
“I don’t really want to change how I look,” says Tom. “I’m happy as I can be in this moment. And I like my eyebrows and my hair. So I’ll keep the hair and the eyebrows just come part and parcel. And my family wouldn’t let me change.”
Tom’s dad Chris, a former police officer and now driving instructor, looked ecstatic in the audience during the audition, when Tom sang Sam Smith
My family are keeping me grounded, they would call me out on it if I started to change
Bond theme Writing’s on the Wall. But his mum Claire, who knits baby clothes for a living, couldn’t be there because she was recovering from a cataracts op.
“Mum’s responsible for most of the YouTube page views of my audition,” says Tom. “She was devastated she couldn’t attend. But she and dad keep me very grounded. None of my family sing or
perform at all, and they’d call me out on it if I started to change.”
Tom’s mum is responsible for encouraging his singing talent.
He says: “Mum used to pick me up from school in the car, she’d stick on Les Mis and I’d play Gavroche’s part. “Mum tried me out on every possible extra-curricular activity going – karate, swimming, football – and I was rubbish at all of them.
“But then she finally put me in for some singing and acting lessons.
“To this day, I think she’s still one of my biggest fans.”
Tom’s sister Katie, a teaching assistant, will marry later this month but has not booked her brother as the entertainment. “I’m forbidden from singing,” says Tom. “Take the attention away from Katie? Absolutely not. That’s why I won’t sing at my own.”
In October Tom and fiancee Hannah Burtenshaw will wed in a small manor house.
The pair met online five and a half years ago and Tom proposed, after saving his student income for a ring, just before Christmas 2019.
“I took Hannah to the Isle of Wight where we were zookeepers for the day and looked after some monkeys.
“Then we went up the top of a hill and I proposed up there. The moment I asked, the heavens opened.”
Tom, who lives with Hannah in West Sussex, might have left the BGT judges open-mouthed with his talent. But doting Tom is more in awe of Hannah’s career as a paediatric nurse.
Tom says: “Hannah works on a high-intensity ward with very sick children in Brighton.
“What she does in her job is 100 per cent better than what I do. She’s amazing – she risked a lot to go out to work every day during the pandemic, when she worked for a while on adults’ wards.
“Hannah makes a real difference to children even day.
“I couldn’t do what she does.” Humble Tom is reluctant even to think about winning the popular ITV talent show and has allowed himself to dream of only modest ambitions, such as buying a little shack in which to play and record music.
There is no big head under his bouncing curls and remarkable brows.
Tom says: “I’ve always known that there are going to be people there who are 10 times better than me so would never act like I’m the best.
“I’d look a fool if I started going round saying, ‘Yes, I’m amazing’.
“No one likes a person who says they’re fantastic.
“So if I did win, and had the chance to perform in front of the Royal Family, I think I’d be very, very lucky.”
Hannah works with very sick children, she risked a lot to work during the pandemic. She makes a real difference