Having a Ball

If you ever wondered what Ronan Keating will be doing in 15 years time you need look no further than Michael Ball.  The darling of show people everywhere, 37 year old Ball has the same saintly aura as our Ronan but like the Boyzone star you can't help but get the impression that maybe there's a bit more to Michael.

Sure, there's the slushy ballads, the extravagant Andrew Lloyd Webber stage productions that he's made his own and the slightly irksome TV shows, but Ball is no clodhopping rent-a-smile.  This is a man who knows what side his contract is buttered on and he's not afraid to milk his nice clean living image for all it's worth which, you won't be surprised to hear, is quite a lot.

"There is a slightly non-controversial aspect to what I do" he says.  "Because I'm not trying to change worlds or take people off in a new direction or anything.  I'm just out to entertain and get people to relate to my music and to see something they can understand and deal with.  I'm not a revolutionary figure."

Ball's CV comes with a list of theatre performances so long you'd think he was an original cast member of The Mouse Trap.  First introduced to us when he appeared briefly in Coronation Street back in the '80's he began his theatre career when he played Marius in Les Miserables in 1985.  Since then Ball has bestrode middle England and the Robson and Jerome fanbase with a slew of solo albums, cast recordings and stage parts ranging from The Phantom of the Opera to Aspects of Love.  His voice has been his fortune, such a perfect instrument for middlebrow theatre that Andrew Lloyd Webber said that he is the best in the world at what he does.

No wonder he's such a cheerful bloke.  As we speak Michael is sitting at the control desk of his studio just outside London where he's recording the first song he's ever written.  It's called Some Else's Dream and it's a collaboration with another singer who sets female hearts a flutter, Brian Kennedy.  Michael first met Brian on Gloria Hunniford's show (where else?) two years ago and naturally enough they hit it off.  "We became mates," says Michael cheerfully.  "We sat at a table and we all liked the same Joni Mitchell songs, started singing together and we stayed in touch.  I saw a few of his shows, he saw a few of mine.  He was constantly trying to persuade me to write which is something I've wanted to do but never had the nerve.  I've always thought that I could never be as good as the people's stuff I sing.  I'd pale into insignificance if I tried to compete.  Brian got me started, made me brave enough."

The thing that really cracked it for Ball however was Kennedy's keening rendition of Carrickfergus on an all-night drinking session.  "Christ!  We must have been drinking and singing till five in the morning and he sang Carrickfergus and it broke my heart, one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard."

Of course, much of the kind of material that Ball sings demands that grandstanding moment or as he puts it, the "eat s*** and die money note" but subtlety is something that he feels he's not appreciated for.  "I know I'm known for musical stuff but it wasn't until my fifth album that I actually recorded those kinds of songs.  I'm a lyric person but what I've changed is that I don't have to show off big notes at the end of a song.  I used to think a song wouldn't work unless it had a big key change and a big f**k off money note at the end.  Subtlety and less is more is often the case".

As if to prove that very point he's just recorded a Joni Mitchell song from Blue called The River for his upcoming Christmas album with pianist Pete Adams.  "For my money it's the best thing I've ever recorded, it's totally undersung and underplayed and I'm really, really proud of it.  I won't kiss goodbye forever to the eat s*** and die money notes, the Ethel Mermans, but it's nice to explore that other side of your voice".

Growing up in South Africa where his father was sent to work for Ford cars, the young Michael listened to a lot of Mowtown.  Under apartheid television was banned and radio strictly state-controlled so he wasn't exposed to the pop delights his friends had back in the UK.  The BBC World Service did hum and crackle in the Ball household but much of his musical upbringing was down to singalongs to My Fair Lady and South Pacific around the piano with his parents which explains his later entry into the world of stage musicals.

When he eventually left South Africa at the age of eleven the apartheid regime was still brutally intact.  The Ball family were more than glad to go.  "It was total anathema," Michael says.  "But when you're that age you just accept things.  I remember being in a park with my gran and there were benches that had Europeans only and non-whites only.  I couldn't get my head around that.  The gardener's son was about my age and people didn't want me to go and play with him and s*** like that, obviously it's completely changed now.  We had a barbeque at the house and people who worked with my dad, black and white, were invited to come to the barbie and they were freaked, absolutely freaked."

A return to South Africa isn't really an option due to the expense of touring down there but, with a hint of the Old Empire tone that suits Ball so well, he says he'd love to tour all those "ex pat" places in the southern hemisphere, all part no doubt of his world domination campaign.  "Well yes," he laughs, "Which is why I'm on a mission to Ireland but don't ask me anything about the last time I was there because I can't remember a thing.  Jaysus, the minute I get on the plane to Ireland I've got an Irish accent.  I always end up in Lillies.  I've only ever done one concert in Ireland but yeah, it was good and the party afterwards was superb."

Michael goes out with Cathy McGowan, former presenter of 60's pop show Ready Steady Go and self-styled Queen of the Mods.  Her daughter Emma has just given birth which rather scarily for Michael would make him a grandfather if he were married.  When I ask Michael what Cathy does now he laughs and says "me".

Image is of course everything.  The cover of his Best Of album pictures Michael standing in repose like love's young dream.  There's a bit of the old Mick Hucknells going on except Mr Ball was luckier than Mick and didn't get beaten with the ugly stick.  "It's important not to project the wrong image" he says, "I like clothes, I like feeling good about myself, but I couldn't contrive an image.  I couldn't pretend to be something that I'm not.  It would be silly to have, I dunno, me in very dodgy flares or to try and have a hip hop look.  You have to complement the kind of show you're doing and you don't want to detract from it."

It is all terribly nice but his fanbase isn't actually the middle-class blue-rinse brigade you might expect; young, old, middle-aged all flock to catch the man in action, "We're talking the lot and it changes all the time.  There are a lot more men now coming to the gigs.  When I first started it was predominantly women over the age of thirty and then when I started doing the pop stuff and the Eurovision Song Contest, younger girls started coming and a lot of girls who were into the theatre.  In shows like Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera and Aspects of Love you've got the young herioc figure and it's someone they can identify with and what's good is that the fans stay with you;  you're not up on the wall one week and down the next to make room for 911 or whatever.

"More men come because the women are now bringing their fellas," he continues enthusiastically.  "I see generations - girls bring their mums who bring their grandmothers.  It really is a cross-section but it is predominantly female and I haven't got the slightest problem with that.  They're all out to have a good time, they know the plot of the show and they know where to go with it to have a good time because it's a two way thing.  In any performance you're only as good as the audience lets you be and if they give you the inspiration to push yourself."

It sounds like Ball's got the ballyhoo behind him to do just that.