YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Ball

lines on the record: 64
first: 2008-03-02
most recent: 2008-03-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Nothing useful, well, it's going to be alcohol then. I'd like all of the output from either Cloudy Bay or St. Clair in the Marlborough District of New Zealand.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a real fan of graphic novels, and I want the Sandman series, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series, brilliantly illustrated, great stories, and I won't get bored of it.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we do a piece of music, it is, oh, I really thought long and hard about all of these songs and I remembered this track. It's still one of my favorite tracks from a super tramp album. Now, I'm not a massive Super Tramp fan, but this track, all the words. just resonated with me, and they kind of summed it all up down to the very last line, please don't let the curtain fall.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“like it or not that'd be fine I think so my problem would be boredom and occupying my time. That's the only drag for me, which is why I've tried to find music that isn't going to get on my nerves after a while. But as far as being on my own, as long as I've got stuff to keep me occupied, I'll be okay. I mustn't dwell”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um yeah, I've done that enough nothing will ever take me back to that place God willing. I'll know the warning sides and I would no longer be scared of asking for help. That's the most important lesson I've learnt in my life.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely totally an image I had of myself. You know, I struggle with white, but yeah, I completely identify with that sort of side.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You wear a fat suit every night. Housewife, indeed. So you've got the big hair, you've got the makeup on. Yeah, she starts as a frumpy munter who's agrophobic and blossoms into this extraordinary butterfly.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recording 1959 that was recorded. To have Michael Paul singing on the prompt. He was responsible probably for global warming and the war in Afghanistan. Do you know what? We all got over it. It's a shame that there is an attitude like that. And I know exactly what you're saying. I think it's been down to me to keep pounding away and to change people's ideas. I know with what I'm doing now, nobody anticipated me going into hairspray. And it's a role. I absolutely wanted to do, I was desperate to do it, having seen it five years ago.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay I thought I've got to have something in there from the theatre. And if I'm on my desert island and I'm going to have to have my fix, then I need lots of it. So it's an overture. It's the best overture to one of the best shows, Gypsy. And we'll only be able to hear a little bit of it. But there are about 12 songs, all of which are gangbusters and that you could scream your head off to. And I will.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Life is another aspect of your profession. Absolutely. Because fans, I think, only want the best. And I can't bear as well lazy journalism. Journalists that will just write down things like housewives favourite or appealing to the blue rinse brigade. It's just lazy, it's rude, and it's, you know, I avoid it.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years of love. I mean, On that, some people, and it's an industry, they can be quite lucrative, I'm sure, but you then have no right to say you can't come in. I think once you opened the door, that's the end of it. You've sold your soul. I'm very happy to go along and do Q&As with fans. That's actually quite different, I think, from press.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she couldn't wake me up, but finally got me out, dragged me out of the house, then ran back in and got the dog, and that the house was just before Christmas the house was ruined. We never moved back in there. It was an electrical fire started in my study, so all my memories went, all the pictures, all the videos, all the books, all that stuff. And it was great eye-opener because that stuff doesn't mean anything. You know, I was all right, she was all right, dog was all right, so.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She still has nightmares about it, I don't remember it. It was just before Christmas must be two thousand one, I think it was. We'd been out on the town, we'd been to a party, came back, she went to bed, I stayed up, and had a couple of whiskies, went into the spare room, she had a cold. And she woke up in the house was on fire. She didn't know why I wasn't in the bed. All the lights had blown in the house and she was coughing and choking. She thought I was in my study. It was about half three or four o'clock in the morning. She thought I'd fallen asleep in there. She opened the study door and the flames came out. Then she thought maybe he's gone into Emma's room into the spare room. She ran upstairs, in the pitch black with all this black smoke, and I was in bed and I'd had the whisky and I'd also taken some night nurse so I was gone.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a bit of a party freak, and I definitely had a point where I chose to turn my back on a lifestyle and have a life with Kathy.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With your partner. I really like that sort of new country music sound. It's sort of closer you get to a theatricality. They're always telling stories, they always wear their heart on their sleeves and I won't get bored of that song.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, the next song is by Garth Brooks, and when we were in America, our song became a Garthbrook song, which is If Tonomara never comes. But I didn't want to play that one. I didn't want to take that one with me. And this is the dance by Garthbrooks, and quite often we do.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not at all, I may have you seen her. I mean, she's beautiful. She'd had I have a stepdaughter, Emma, so she'd had her family. And I don't think I probably could have had a relationship as profound as this. It certainly wouldn't like with anyone other than her”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know why it happened. We just started talking. Like this, she came to interview and then it stopped being a job and we carried on talking and then we had to phone each other that night and then she had to come to the opening night and then we just, I don't know, I don't know why it happened. I said she just stalked me and finally. But it was the greatest thing that happened. She completely sorted my life out.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aspect I was doing, aspects of love. And she wasn't absolutely not looking for anybody, certainly not someone like me. I wasn't.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just in every paper on every show. She was a cool girl. Yeah, everyone wanted to be. So she came to interview me when we were doing...”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely not. No, I just sleep a lot. I'm not a party animal. I love being at home. You know, one of the reasons that I got out of the cycle when I went into aspects of love was because I met a fabulous woman, Kathy, and we've been together for 17 years.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it does. Yeah, not often, and it comes back when I'm not well But now I can control it, I know what how to do it, so it won't have I'm not ignorant about it.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No one would have known I can do this. I'll never allow myself to feel that bad, and at the same time God bless him, Camera McIntosh phoned, because I'd walked out of Les Miz, and they were recasting Phantom of the Opera. Michael Crawford and Steve Barton were leaving to go and do it on Broadway. Now, Cameron's a canny man. And he just said to me, this is the right thing for you to do. You're playing the romantic hero, but all pressure is on the guy who's taken over from Michael Crawford. Trust me, it's the right thing to do.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if millions watched the Miss England contest, but it's significant amount, yeah, because there's only three channels now they probably did. And I went on I had pins and needles down because I'd seized up. My whole body had seized up. Pins and needles shooting down my hands. But I did it. And it wasn't a particularly good performance, but I watched it back and I went, no one would have known.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you didn't seek therapy with doctors It so happened that Miss England contest was being shown by Thames television and wanted someone to do the cabaret while they were counting up the votes, and it was actually going to be shown on telly. And would I come and sing a song”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've got, well, you might think this is mad, but it's sailing by, and the reason it's there is wherever you are in the world, whatever you've been doing, if you hear this music, everything seems all right. Everything seems okay. And if I'm stuck on this desert island, then I know I'm going to be happy.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really can't answer that, Kirsty. I can only assume it's because I just didn't want to appear like anything other than everything was all right. Ostensibly I seemed very open and positive, but the actual truth was I found it very difficult to really open up.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was just anybody looking at me. and me being a centre of attention. I just wanted to disappear. And I did that for about nine months. I'd walked out of Les Miz, I walked out of the greatest show imaginable, and the best parts for a juvenile. I just said to them, I simply can't do this. I have to leave, and made up my mind to give it all up. I thought I'll never perform again, ever.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By spending a lot of time on my own in the flat and to the point where I didn't even want to go outside of the front door.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and they just felt terribly sorry for me. I lived on my own and I just cut myself off. It was a complete breakdown physically and mentally really”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You were going through the motions. Yeah, absolutely. And all kinds of stuff, you know, you think you honestly think you're dying. And I started going into this descent of terrible depression and panic attacks happening, not just on the stage. I'd go into the tube on the way into work and I'd just cross over the station and come back and phone in and say I can't come in. I didn't know how to deal with it. And I think because of that whole thing of not being able to open up and not to share through the boarding school era, I wouldn't talk about it. I simply wouldn't. Let myself appear vulnerable it was perfectly obvious to everyone I was cracking up, but I wouldn't share it.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, your heart starts racing, you get tunnel vision, there's pounding in your ears, you break out into a sweat, and you just, it's the fight or flight feeling. It's like a surge of adrenaline. And everything about it is awful. All of this happening in a couple of seconds”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fever and that then escalated Six, seven weeks. I came back to work and I came back still feeling ill with this kind of post-viral syndrome. And I had my first panic attack on stage. It was the most appalling feeling I've ever had.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, all through the time while I was at college, while I was at drama school, one person who I listened to constantly who I still listened to constantly who I think is the greatest singer-songwriter ever is Joni Mitchell. This one, merely because I can kind of, it pictures up me skipping along the beach. I could have taken any of hers. Jonie Mitchell's carry.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What happened with me, I went from pirates into Les Mis, and I was as green as I was cabbage looking. I didn't know I was born. And it was magical. And I didn't have a nerve in my body because I hadn't had anything test me. And what happened with Lame Miz is I got ill. I got glandular fever on a nucleosis, which started off with awful tonsilitis so I couldn't sing on stage. Then when I went back I kind of think had the post viral syndrome and I was exhausted.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When they're on stage and when things are demanded of them. I quite know why I'm so coy about talking about. I suppose I'm a bit protective about an image, I suppose, but I am quite coy about talking about the things that I did because I don't want But the two you can't do the both. You can do it when you're mucking around. You can't do it when you're working. And I learned that really quickly.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, drugs and soft drugs and all that sort of thing. And really, it was without direction. An unneeded something, a really badly needed something.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, school and at college, and I was a dropout and I was quite badly behaved. In what respect? I don't know if I should, well, you know, I used to indulge in stuff.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were as proud as was humanly possible, I think. I think they were so relieved, first of all, I think secretly they thought I was going to be a bit of a worry. I was going to actually find my way through life.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“standing in line on all you have three huge rooms so you have your dance audition you're acting audition and your um singing audition it was a cattle gall proper cattle gall and I ended up with this sleeve roll in the pirates with Paul Nicholas playing the pirate king Bonnie Langford was Mabel Victor Spinetti do you know Victor Spinetti who was our major general and Dillis Leigh was in it as well and it was A Dream An unbelievable experience.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not at all. I thought I'd love to do that, but I didn't know that one could. And when I finally joined the youth theatre and they said to me, well, have I thought about going to drama school? Lady called K Dudney. It suddenly kind of clicked, literally almost overnight. I went into the environment I knew I needed to be in and I wanted to be in.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, now I've been interested in theatre my dad had taken me to see shows in the holidays and we'd been to Stratford on Avon to see King Lear. I remember one of the most amazing productions I'd ever seen, Drevin undirected it. Donald Sindon was Lear. Judy Dench. All people I know now. This is what Judy Dench was Reagan. Do you say that?”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talk about this in Down of Washington singing September in the rain. Absolutely. I used to hear this when I'd gone away back to school. And one of the songs that we'd always sit down and sing and mum was really good at playing the piano was September in the rain. And I used to hear it and cry my eyes out thinking, why am I here? So I thought this would really cheer me up on the desert island.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of happy face. Give him a shot. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Never show that there are any problems at all, which is just storing it up, isn't it? Because you know it's going to come out eventually.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A very happy family life. Certainly when I went to the board at school, absolutely. And it kind of changed life at home as well. My sister had been born by then. I'm nine years older than her. So I went from being kind of the little... to being the middle child away at school, if the school was extremely sporty and academic, everything that I'm not, I think that's when you start inventing yourself in order to try and fit in. So you try and be all things to all men. You're trying to be popular, you try to be funny, you try to be clever, all the things that I say, all the things to all men. And you then kind of... Don't have any time to just unburden yourself when you're little.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my folks had worked really hard, Dad had done really well in business, and my folks thought they were giving me the best education possible. I didn't know there was any real alternative. And it was a horrible experience. I think that boarding schools are wrong.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can imagine how excited I was doing that. But I would never get to the point where people would go when actually want to shoot me. Leave them once more. And I'd stop. Absolutely. And it would never get to the bit where I was a pain, a hope.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of all write from the start. It sounds awful now the kind of kid you'd want to shoot. But I loved the movie, The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. And I used to come in and I'd do bits of it and, you know, do bit of birt, you know, me old bamboo, me old bamboo from chitty chitty bang bang and stuff. Which of course you do.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a song Sally Brown is a bright new lart away Roland go she drinks rum and chews to back her way I can't remember it We all used to just get up and do stuff and Gran was we were talking about earlier was a real one for galvanizing that so instead of everyone sitting around and watching Tully we'd all get up and have fun”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I listened to music and I used to sing along to it and I used to listen to people like Haley Jackson and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and that's how I taught myself to sing.”
2008-03-02 · Desert Island Discs · Michael Ball · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source