{"id":784102,"date":"2026-09-27T09:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T09:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/784102\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T09:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T09:02:10","slug":"michael-ball-recalls-starting-his-career-busking-in-guildford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/784102\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Ball recalls starting his career busking in Guildford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Singer and broadcaster Michael Ball has described how his first public performances were busking as a student.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The West End star and radio presenter said he used to sing in an underpass in Guildford, Surrey, while at drama school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ball said that, despite learning acting, &#8220;I guess I had a voice&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to BBC South East, ahead of a performance in Brighton on his current tour, he said: &#8220;I never had any music training.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Within months of leaving drama school, Ball landed a part in London for the debut of one of the most famous musicals of all time, Les Mis\u00e9rables.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;I went for an audition for a brand-new musical at the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company].<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Less than a year out of drama school I found myself in the West End in the greatest show in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ball went on to star in many hit musicals over the years including Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love, Hairspray and Sweeney Todd. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Singer and broadcaster Michael Ball has described how his first public performances were busking as a student. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-784102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}