Loserville: How Gareth Gates learned the hard way

It seems there are three camps when it comes to Gareth Gates. There’s the camp that think he’s great (there was a lot of excitement on my Twitter feed when I mentioned I’d be interviewing him).

Then there are two other camps – those that consider, because of the more middle of the road nature of his music – that to have an opinion on Gates is like having an opinion on beige.

The third camp that seems to exist includes those who are a little unforgiving about the fact that Gates was there at the beginning, when the plague of television singing talent shows we now experience on an endless loop seemed like harmless nonsense.

The thing is, once you meet him, whichever camp you previously belonged to, you will leave fully signed up to the Gareth Gates fan club.

He loves to do work for charity, he happily talks about the mistakes he’s made in his life, his humility is seriously impressive, he stands up for the underdog, he’s polite and he loves his mum.

He is just an incredibly nice young man.

For example, when I point out that it seems paradoxically like he’s been around forever, and yet also like it was only two minutes since he was in Pop Idol, he says: “When I think it was ten years ago I think ‘oh my god, I’m getting old’. I wish I’d had time to appreciate things a little more when everything was crazy and starting to happen in my career,” he says.

“One day I was in Asia, then I’d fly to Germany for an award ceremony then South Africa for a concert, back to Europe. It seemed to happen so fast.

“There were so many times when I wish I had been able to stop and just for a minute, think ‘wow’, you know? I really appreciate everything that I’ve been able to experience and tried to remain humble about it all.”

He is honestly, what your gran might call a lovely lad.

These days Gates isn’t quite so much in the public eye, but there was a time when the boy from Bradford with the stammer and the singing voice would be mobbed everywhere he went.

X Factor and all those shows that churn out meaningless pop stars have become so relentless that’s it’s possible to forget that at one time the idea seemed original and people, interested.

“I don’t think any of the shows has captured the public in the way mine and Will’s did,” says Gates, Will being Will Young, the singer who beat Gates to the winner’s podium in Pop Idol 2002.

The show, which was screened a decade ago this year, regularly attracted over ten million viewers.

“It was just one of those shows that everyone seemed to watch. The night of the final was one of those times where people remember where they were – loads of people tell me that they remember where they watched it.

“I don’t think there’s been a show that has gripped people quite so much.”

It really did grip people and was without a doubt event television.

The problem was that event television and winning a talent show does not a career with longevity make. It has, as more of them have appeared, become a general rule that if you gain success after appearing on a show such as X Factor (the successor to Pop Idol) you are swimming against the tide. For every Will Young there is a Shayne Ward. Exactly.

Gates, despite being a runner up in the competition, has managed to carve out a career in the public eye. He’s still very popular in Asia – “That’s a large market for me” – and he has teamed up with Jonathan Wilkes to run a theatre school. The career also isn’t damaged by the fact that his media profile, despite it now being a decade since Pop Idol, is still quite high.

All of this is helped by the fact that Gates’s story is so immediately media friendly.

In Britain we like few things more than an underdog, and the story of a boy who stammers so badly he can take minutes to say his name and yet made a career living in the public eye is, there’s no doubt about it, a great story.

“It’s a struggle doing interviews and that kind of thing. I have to do warm ups and have a speech coach with me (Chris, his speech coach, sits in on our interview), so it’s not as easy for me to do things as a fluent speaker,” he says.

“It’s quite difficult if you don’t have a voice, to get across your point and explain what you want to say and that can make it difficult to say your personality. I have thoughts and opinions and you don’t get to portray that if you struggle to say what you’re thinking. No-one knows why you stammer – something happens between here (pointing at his head) and here (point at his mouth). But you learn to cope.”

Using something called the McGuire he has, if not quite conquered, at least put up a good fight against his stammer – and has become a teacher with the programme, helping other people who battle stammers.

It is clearly, however, a daily battle and when Chris goes to use the bathroom the first thing he says is a warning that his speech is probably about to get quite laboured.

It does beg the question, why on earth pursue a career as a singer?

It transpires that music, unsurprisingly really, was a way Gates could communicate with the world.

But it’s not just that. This is a lad from Bradford with a backbone of steel.

Towards the end of the interview we talk about some of the negative aspects of being in the public eye.

Shortly after appearing on Pop Idol and gaining nationwide fame, he had a relationship with professional tabloid celebrity Jordan.

The media was not necessarily unkind, but the coverage was not the sort you would want your mum to read.

“The stuff I had to go through as a kid with my stammer and being bullied for it and those sorts of hardships that I’ve put up with have actually served me really well,” he says. “I’m immune or numb to the things that get written about me in the press because I’ve had a lot worse things said to me well before I was in the public eye and had the mick ripped out of me which in a way made me hardened to any of that sort of stuff. But sure, some of the things that were in the press, particularly in the early days, I’d rather not have seen. I don’t see why you should have to tell the whole world about your private life. (Jordan) obviously sold the story and when I was asked about it I just denied it and said it was rubbish. I’ve since learnt that you really can’t lie to the press but at the time I was just like ‘no, no, please don’t tell me mum’.”

It must have been odd for Gates to see his private life splashed across the national newspapers, particularly given that he was at heart, and remains to this day, an ordinary Bradford lad who just happens to have a talent for singing.

He’s home in Yorkshire to appear in the West Yorkshire Playhouse’s new musical Loserville. Written by former Busted band member James Bourne and Elliot Davis, there are high hopes for the show, which saw a number of regional theatres vying for the chance to stage the premiere. It’s early days but there is already talk of the West End and it’s being referred to in theatre circles as a possible modern day Grease.

Rehearsing in Leeds, Gates is already wondering about all the extra work he is having to do for the show – in which he sings, but in which there is a lot of dialogue – for a man with a pronounced stutter, no small challenge. He adds: “I’m not a dancer, but yesterday I discovered that I’ll be doing a lot of dancing and it’s the first time I’ve done so much straight acting in a piece as well. What’s great is that it’s opened up a whole new world and one day I might do TV or film. I’m the sort of person who, if I put my mind to something I do everything I can to achieve it.”

He doesn’t make things easy on himself – at the first read through the day before we met he was working earlier than everyone else with his speech coach, warming up and doing exercises to get through reading the script aloud in front of the cast.

Life would be much easier if he was staying in an apartment near to the Playhouse. Alas, the Yorkshire lad is within driving distance of home.

“I’m living at home at my mum and dad’s in Bradford while I’m here. It would be a lot easier if I stayed in an apartment and I’m travelling in every day. I was going to get a place in Leeds, but my mum was like ‘What? No chance’. It is lovely to be back and here the accent again. I am based in London now, but I love it up here and these will always be my roots.”

How does he cope with it all? Being so attached to his roots, yet a singing star who has had highs and lows, appeared in the tabloids with stories about his personal life and faces a daily battle over his stammer? “You’ve got to learn to laugh, haven’t you?

“I’m involved with a lot of charities, I’m helping out next week with National Fostering Week and I’ve seen lots of different cultures and parts of the world were people are a lot worse off. I think you should be happy with what you’ve got and be thankful.” A really, really nice guy.

Loserville is at West Yorkshire Playhouse June 16 to July 14. 0113 2137700.