MICHAEL Ball is barred from playing his own songs on the radio. The West End singer has taken over hosting Radio 2’s Sunday Love Songs following the sudden death of former host Steve Wright aged 69 earlier this year.
Asked if he would be playing any of his own romantic tracks from his 40 year musical career like Love Changes Everything from Aspects of Love, he laughed: “I am forbidden… and I’m not Elaine Paige. Can you imagine.. ‘And that was yours truly…’ It would be wrong though and it wouldn’t feel right. I wouldn’t play my own songs. Well maybe once at Christmas or once a year I’ll sneak one in.”
Michael, who is 62 and has just released a new novel called A Backstage Betrayal, admits he had to think ‘’long and hard’’ before he accepted taking over Wright’s old job fronting Sunday Love Songs. He added: “I had to think long and hard. I really did because first of all we were still reeling from the shock of losing Steve because it was a shock to everybody. Then when the controller approached me a couple of months after he had passed and said ‘We’d love you to consider doing this’, I thought ‘Can I do this? Is it right for me to do this?’
“But I thought Steve would approve. We got on really well and we had a good relationship. I thought it was important to keep Love Songs and not to just completely change that show. He created that ‘appointment to listen’ bit of radio and it is a place where the listener gets to really be part of the show and I wanted to expand on that.”
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(Image: Michael Ball X))Michael - who is dating presenter Cathy McGowan - is about to release his sixth album with Alfie Boe called Together At Home. The pair are close friends. And he loves to tease the tenor - who is married - by pretending to people that they are a couple in real life.
He told the Yeovil Literary Festival: "I am forever winding Alfie up about this and he is mortified. We'll be checking into a hotel and I'll go 'Oh have we got separate rooms?'."
Michael found fame on the West End stage in the mid-1980s in Les Miserables as Marius and Phantom of the Opera as Raoul. But his most famous role came in 1989 when he took the lead role as Alex in Aspects of Love written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black and Charles Hart. He scored a number two hit in the pop charts with Love Changes Everything from the musical.
Ball later starred in West End shows Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Woman In White and Sunset Boulevard. In 1992, he represented the UK at Eurovision and came in second place with the song One Step Out of Time.
He has become a very successful recording artist too and to date he has released 20 solo albums. Radio 2 bosses seized on his popularity and he was hired to host Michael Ball's Sunday Brunch in 2008. Then in 2013, he fronted Sunday Night With Michael Ball and then moved to a Sunday morning slot with The Michael Ball Show.
Ball has been dating former Ready Steady Go presenter Cathy McGowan since 1992 but the pair have never wed. She was previously married to actor Hywel Bennett. They have a daughter called Emma.
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