Michael Ball: ‘I hid in my flat for months. I suffered so badly with nerves’

At 16 I left my boarding school under a bit of a cloud. It was just miserable. It was very academic and very strict. If you weren’t doing well academically or in sport, they weren’t keen on you.

I was a bit rebellious. Not a bad kid, but I just didn’t fit anywhere. I didn’t have anything in common with anyone there. You don’t want to be seen as anything different or you get bullied. So I was by no means a shrinking violet; I was the life and soul. You try to be cool, and you learn not to share anything about your true self.

You become very secretive and closed. Which is not  in my nature. Nothing beats coming home from school and having a cuddle from your mum. But I lost that close rapport and that affectionate thing with my parents ’cos I didn’t see them very often. I did get it back eventually but it took a good while.

Once I became an adult I did have a conversation with my parents about my time at boarding school. I have no issues now about anything that happened in my childhood. I’ve confronted it all and talked to my folks about it. And I understand why they did it. They were doing their best. They were both from working-class families, they’d done well and they thought that’s what you did, you sent your kid away to school.

That proved you’d done well and it gave your children a good rounded education. They acknowledge now it was absolutely the wrong fit for me. What I do regret is that secrecy which I developed, I stopped opening up to them. And that’s not good, that can be dangerous. I became quite distant from my dad for a while. It’s lovely that I have such a close relationship with him now that I can say that. I also found out later that they were having their own issues at the time too. They’re no longer together.

When I look back I see there was a key person in my life, a terrifying lady who ran Surrey Youth Theatre. I had no direction in my life. I loved music, I loved going to the theatre and I loved performing. But it never occurred to me I might make a living out of doing those things. Instead I was failing my A-levels and getting into trouble.

She said, “Why don’t you apply to Guildford drama school?”So I auditioned and I won a scholarship and off I went. Suddenly I had something to aim for, I had a focus and a gameplan.

I remember my first performance, right out of drama school, in the musical Godspell. We were up in a wonderful theatre in Wales. It was the best start to professional performing that anyone could have.

Every night these huge doors would open, people would come sweeping in and I got loads of attention singing these great big songs in this great theatre. And I was getting a pay packet at the end of the week. I just felt at home right away. Music, a live audience, me in control of what I was doing, punters actually paying to see the show. It was such a good feeling. And I still get that.

I’ve tried to analyse why I suffered so badly with nerves for years. Party it was to do with the physical illness [Ball got glandular fever when he was 23 and starring in Les Misérables]. It left me very tired and debilitated, and that starts the demons in your head. Suddenly there’s this little voice in your head saying, you’re going to get this wrong, you’re going to mess this up and let everyone down.

And if, like me, you have this inability to open up to people, you can’t talk to anyone about it, and the demons take over. You feel you have to look strong on the outside even if – and this is how it really was – you feel like you’re dying. I was going potty. Anyone who’s suffered from panic attacks knows how frightening they are. And I was getting them on stage. It came to a point I couldn’t get off the Tube, I was so scared of having an attack. So I had to leave the show and have a complete retreat.