Gareth Malone: The Grenfell choir left me in tears – and needing therapy
TV CHOIRMASTER Gareth Malone today reveals that he sought therapy as he helped children affected by the Grenfell disaster to find their voice.
In an interview with Event magazine, he explains how he quickly realised that working on TV series The Choir: Our School By The Tower – which starts on BBC1 tomorrow night – would be emotionally gruelling.
‘This is the first time I spoke to a psychotherapist weekly so that I could get my own reaction to it out of the way and just be an open space for the kids to talk,’ he says. ‘I’m really glad I did that.’
Four pupils and one former pupil from the Kensington Aldridge Academy died in the blaze in 2017 that killed 72. Many children and teachers at the school lost friends and relatives.
Malone, 43, visited the pupils every week for seven months as they prepared to return to their original buildings at the base of Grenfell Tower in West London.
The experience, he admits, changed his ‘lazy, unchallenged perception’ of life on a council estate. ‘I was so powerfully moved, watching fathers who are just like me,’ he adds. ‘I felt very lucky. There but for the grace of God go I. Your heart goes out to them. Also, these people had put their faith in a system, and they were let down abominably.’
Having recorded local choirs for a Grenfell charity single after the inferno, Malone knew the impact watching the schoolchildren build a new future would have on him. ‘I was very moved and so were they. There were lots of tears,’ he says.