Stage fright attack made Les Mis a complete misery
Michael Ball’s stage career nearly ended before it began when he literally froze mid-show. But it’s all good material for his debut novel, he tells Hannah Stephenson...
a real life. I do the shopping and the cooking.
“If you’ve got people in your life who are intuitive, sensitive and understand what makes you tick, and who you are able to talk to, that’s what I need. Cath sees the warning signs in me. She’ll say, ‘Right, we’re backing off now’.”
He’s immensely proud of his family (he is stepfather to Cathy’s daughter, Emma, godfather to Emma’s son and step-grandfather to her daughter) and says he finds it easy to switch off after work, enveloping himself in family life. He turned 60 in June, which he says “sort of sucks”. Michael adds: “When I got my Freedom Pass, I went, what? And prescriptions are free now – and my god do we need more prescriptions! Everything hurts! But it [turning 60] emboldens you. You think, let’s have a go. If you don’t, you’ll never know.”
He has a knack of being able to make things happen – like the book. “I had plot ideas, I knew what I wanted to write and, like so much in my career, you make the right phonecalls and then just knuckle down and see if anything will come of it.”
He says the pandemic enabled him to expand creatively, writing songs and an album, Together In Vegas, with Alfie Boe, with whom he hopes to tour again in 2024. He’ll be back in the West End next year (although he won’t reveal what for) and has a second novel to write to fulfil his two-book deal.
He and Alfie Boe remain firm friends outside work. “We’re not Ant and Dec,” Michael says wryly. “We don’t live next door to each other and we are very different in so many ways, but we just get each other.”
Unlike his singing pal, however, he wouldn’t appear on reality shows like Freeze The Fear With Wim Hof.
“I love them [reality shows] to bits and there have been approaches made, but I’m too competitive and it’s not for me. I would love to do them but I’d need to edit them. And the old stage fright might come back.”
In any case, it doesn’t seem he’d have time for reality TV in his jam-packed schedule.
“I’ve never just sat around and waited for something to happen,” he observes. “I’ve been given the opportunity to diversify, to write songs, to present, to be able to motivate opportunities for myself, to be proactive and think outside the box.”
The Empire by Michael Ball is published by Zaffre, £20. Michael Ball and Alfie Boe’s new album Together In Vegas is out now