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Good Morning Britain Host Ed Balls Moves Studio Audience as He Reveals Struggle with Severe Speech Seizures That Made Reading Aloud Impossible
Good Morning Britain presenter Ed Balls was left close to tears after interviewing an inspirational woman on Thursday’s episode of the show.
Jessie Yendle, 30, from Wales, – who has a stammer – appeared on the show to discuss stuttering leaving Ed, 57, emotional.
Ed has previously discussed his experiences of having a stammer recalling a ‘decade-long struggle’ with his speech, which saw him famously mocked by David Cameron in the Commons in 2012.
Meanwhile Jessie has had a stammer since she was young and is now well known for posting videos on social media to help build her confidence, and now uses her experience to inspire others.
Ed said at the time: ‘You just have to be yourself whatever you do. It doesn’t cause me a problem as Secretary of State, although there are times when it is tough.
‘The worst thing you can do is try and stop it. That’s when you trip up. It happens to me on live TV.
‘Some people speak without notes because they think it looks better. Some people do it because they think it leads to a better speech. But I can’t read the words out.’
At the time, the British Stammering Association announced that Ed had become a patron of the association.
Its chief executive, Norbert Lieckfeldt, commended him for talking about his stammer in public.
He later admitted he didn’t know he had one until he was ‘already in the Cabinet’ and found out he had issues speaking publicly in certain situations.
During an interview with the Independent in 2021, he said: ‘When I was selected to be an MP in 2004, I spoke to my dad after BBC Any Questions? and he said, ‘You’ve got the same as me but I don’t know what it is’.
He said: ‘I had speech therapy every week for three years. I was put in touch with a speech therapist called Jan Logan from City Lit, who said it was a stammer.
‘I spent six months arguing with her about whether it was a stammer or not, because I didn’t really believe it.’
Ed then got to know former Monty Python star Michael Palin who has campaigned to raise awareness of stammering as a serious problem. He visited Palin’s Centre for Stammering Children in London in 2011.
There a father whose child was struggling with a stammer said Ed was a ‘coward’ for not coming out about his own. ‘Why don’t you give these kids some hope and confidence that you can have a stammer and become a Cabinet minister?’ he asked him.
Ed was ‘mortified’ – and wrote an article for The Times, admitting to having the affliction.
The stammer, however, came back as he responded to then-chancellor George Osborne’s autumn statement in 2012.
‘I suddenly had a really bad block, and there was a gale of noise and mockery from the Tories, with David Cameron leading the laughter,’ he recalled.
In 2012, the former Chancellor Mr Osborn denied that Conservatives were laughing at the shadow chancellor over his stammer.
‘I would say the reason why the House of Commons doesn’t take Ed Balls very seriously is not, it’s got nothing to do with the fact he’s got a stammer.’
‘It’s because he was the chief economic adviser when it all went wrong, and he never acknowledges that. He never admits that he was there at the scene of the crime, so obviously when we listen to his answers about what should happen next, we’re a bit skeptical.’
The incident persuaded him to speak the next morning on Radio 4’s Today programme about his stammer and how it could affect his Commons performance.
‘I came out of the Today interview, my phone exploding with messages saying ‘that was brilliant’, he wrote.
‘But then as tears welled up I sat disconsolate in a room on my own for ten minutes, thinking: ‘Why make myself so exposed?’.’
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Source: Tampa Bay Times
