Blurred vision helps Duke beat stage fright
Prince William reveals how he overcame nerves in new film covering football and mental health
FOR some, getting over nerves about public speaking requires practice, experience or even imagining one’s audience in their underwear.
For the Duke of Cambridge, it was rather more simple. He has described how he accidentally overcame anxiety about giving speeches as his eyesight deteriorated to leave those watching in the crowd a “blur”.
In a documentary about men’s mental health, he said he had experienced a “bit of anxiety” about speeches and worried that he “best not mess this up”.
But, he added: “My eyesight started to tail off a little bit as I got older, and I didn’t use to wear contacts when I was working, so when I gave speeches I couldn’t see anyone’s face.
“And it helps, because it’s just a blur of faces … I can see enough to read the paper and stuff like that, but I couldn’t actually see the whole room.
“Because I couldn’t see everyone’s eyes, you don’t feel like the whole weight of the room is watching you.”
The Duke was speaking to a young footballer in South Wales, who talked candidly about his experience with serious anxiety and how the sport, as well as sharing his feelings, had helped.
The documentary is aimed at encouraging men in particular to open up about their emotions, connecting through a sport that the Duke describes as “part of the fabric of this country”.
Calling on football fans to “chip away” at the stigma of speaking about mental health, he said it was time for Britain to move on from the stiff-upper-lip mentality that had been adopted through necessity by those who lived through two world wars.
“There is no amount of talking, no amount of explaining, no amount of counselling you can have, that can get a whole generation past the atrocities and the grief and the sadness that a whole nation felt about two world wars,” the Duke said. “I think that in itself made a generation internalise a lot of their problems because they just wanted to get on with life.
“We’ve got to be able to be more open and more able to talk about stuff.”
In the programme, the Duke talks to professional footballers including Frank Lampard, Joe Hart and Tyrone Mings about how the sport can do more to support players and fans. He also spends time with members of Sands United, a team of bereaved fathers who met through the stillbirth and neonatal death charity.
“As Brits, we’re not particularly good at dealing with emotions,” the Duke said. “Guys particularly don’t know what to say when it’s something sad, and it’s only really people who have been through a very difficult situation [who] can really understand that actually asking the question is OK.”
Football, Prince William and Our Mental Health will be broadcast this evening at 8.05pm on BBC One.