Gareth Malone: he wants to teach the world to sing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/jun/03/profile-gareth-malone-queen-jubilee

Version 0 of 1.

He is an unlikely people's hero. He has the body of the Milkybar Kid, the nerdy quiff of Tintin, the bow tie of a ventriloquist's dummy and the specs of a librarian. And yet the nation has taken 36-year-old Gareth Malone to its heart. There's that part of the nation that goes dewy-eyed at the sound of servicemen's other halves joining their voices in reach-for-the-Kleenex harmony. And it's surprising how large that part of the nation is. Especially in weeks such as this.

But, equally, few reality stars have been as successful in reaching the more difficult to seduce. His work on his first show, The Choir, with a bunch of comprehensive schoolchildren suggested he might be a sort of Jamie Oliver of singing.

Malone and his Military Wives Choir will be leading the Commonwealth Band at the diamond jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace tomorrow. It's significant that this fact was first announced exclusively on the British Monarchy Facebook page (yes, this phenomenon exists). Because this is exactly where Malone fits in – at the slightly clunky, uncomfortably British intersection of the modern and the traditional.

He has been closely involved with Sing, the official diamond jubilee song co-written by Gary Barlow and Andrew Lloyd Webber. As well as featuring the Military Wives Choir, the on-sale version of the track, also features Prince Harry on the tambourine "in his recording debut". To his credit, there is no suggestion this was Malone's idea.

Britain's favourite choirmaster has also been in the headlines for speaking out about bullying. He revealed last week that he has regretted not hitting back at bullying when he was at school. "It never quite got to, 'I'm just going to lamp them', but looking back I kind of wish I had because it would have solved it. I am not endorsing violence but maybe it would have been better just to have a bit of a scrap in the playground."

In his current incarnation, he is still on the receiving end of jibes about being "a bit gay". He is married to Becky, an inner-city schoolteacher, and they have a 20-month-old daughter, Esther. "It was slightly disappointing to find that, after leaving school and leaving all that behind me from the age of about 15 to 30 and then coming into television and realising, 'Oh, right, everyone is just as juvenile as the kids at school were.' I mean, I am fairly flamboyant and expressive, but I know plenty of gay people who are incredibly repressed and aren't showy and don't like Judy Garland, you know."

He added that many people still seem to regard "any display of emotion, crying, heart, feeling" as "gay" and see singing in a choir as something for women. "It's an ongoing problem and I think it's been the spine of my work. Boys don't sing. They just don't want to open up or they don't want to make idiots of themselves."

Malone's philosophy is all about the power of emotional resilience. It's what he draws on to bring out the best in his singers. Something about his quietly supportive, no-nonsense attitude captures the spirit of the jubilee. Fresh-faced, young and talented but not too funky or hip, he embodies something obviously many felt was missing from the entertainment scene: clean-cut, sensible niceness.

Self-dubbed "choral animateur", Malone is best known for his work with the Military Wives Choir, but he first appeared on BBC2 five years ago with The Choir, a series that followed his attempts to build a school choir from scratch and make them capable of competing at the 2006 World Choir Games in China. The series won a Bafta. The Big Performance for children's channel CBBC followed, where he coached 10 painfully shy young singers, culminating in a live performance for Children in Need in front of 40,000 people.

His 2011 show Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne, about a group of untrained teenagers performing opera, won an Emmy. TV critic Lucy Mangan wrote at the time: "The joy of any programme involving Malone is that he has perfect pitch in everything. He sees each member of his choir in the round and provides each one with the right amount of praise, cajolery and castigation." One of the most moving moments in the film comes when one of the choir sobs: "It just goes to show that with the right teacher you can achieve anything." Malone is now filming another series of The Choir and has shot the pilot for a new show in America.

Malone has said it took him years to realise that his skills lie in "leading others". He grew up in London and moved to Bournemouth at the age of 10, where his parents still live. His father worked in a bank and his mother worked at Marks & Spencer before joining the civil service. Both sang in a choir and always had music in the house. The young Gareth was particularly close to his late grandmother, Patricia. "She was an inspiring, witty, incisive character and I wanted to be like her."

He attended a grammar school where his love of music first made him a target for bullies. "I was not a rough-and-tumble sort of child and in an all-boys' school that can get you a ribbing." He performed in a touring production of Evita at Bournemouth Pavilion at the age of 11. In his teen years, he sold ice creams on Bournemouth beach, where his boss made him pick cigarette ends out of the sand. "I knew then that I wanted more out of life. So I threw myself into everything at school." He trained as a classical singer, studied drama at the University of East Anglia and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. He was assistant conductor and chorusmaster at the London Symphony Orchestra and, until 2009, when TV work took over, he ran its youth and community choirs.

It was at the LSO that Malone got his break when producers of The Choir, unable to find someone to front the programme, hit upon the idea of researching the term "community choirmasters" and Malone's name popped up. Since then, the blinking, pale-faced David to Simon Cowell's preening, perma-tanned Goliath has reinvented musical reality TV. When his Military Wives song Wherever You Are reached number one last year, selling more than half-a-million copies in its first week, Cowell was finally forced to admit defeat.

No small part of Malone's appeal is that he offers the nerd's revenge. He has taken on the giants of the talent shows and won. His focus is on filling his singers with self-belief, helping them to see potential in themselves they would not have found on their own. But he shares a steely-eyed commercial sensibility with Cowell. Malone doesn't really do subtle. Military Wives' debut album In My Dreams, which came out in March, features the tracks On My Own and With or Without You.

None the less, Malone somehow manages to put himself beyond criticism in the way he does things. The success of the TV series resulted in the Military Wives Choirs Foundation, a social support network "for military wives through the medium of song": £1 from the sale of each album goes to this charity. In its first week of sale, only Bruce Springsteen could keep it off the number one spot. By the second week, the Wives' sales had relegated the Boss to number five.

It helps that even the most stony-hearted of TV critics adore his sympathetic, quiet manner. "Jamie Oliver might have changed school dinners but with his TV series Gareth Malone showed that we are more, much more than we eat," wrote Norman Lebrecht in the London Evening Standard. "One of the most enthralling, informative and uplifting reality series yet made," wrote Andrew Billen in the Times. About time for a backlash? Not just yet. The only project that has drawn criticism was the 2010 series Extraordinary School for Boys, where he stepped away from his choirmaster role and tried to engage a group of primary-school boys who hated school. He swiftly returned to the niche where he works best: as a singing maestro and coach supreme.

In the past year, his work has also seemed to capture the patriotic public mood. The text of the Military Wives' hit is a love poem compiled from letters written between the women and the absent servicemen. It was set to music by Paul Mealor, who also composed a choral work sung at the royal wedding in 2011. Now, wherever there's a musical moment that needs to be underlined as patriotic, sympathetic and worthy, Malone will probably be somewhere in the wings. His ambition? To be remembered for music. "I'd like people to listen to some music and say, 'Gareth introduced me to this…' That would be a great epitaph."

THE MALONE FILE

Born Gareth Malone in 1975; raised in London and Bournemouth. Studied drama at the University of East Anglia and postgraduate vocal studies at the Royal Academy of Music. Married to Becky, a teacher, they have a 20-month-old daughter, Esther.

Best of times His breakthrough reality show The Choir was broadcast to huge acclaim, much of the praise concentrating on Malone's charm and skills at coaxing fine performances from singing beginners. The Military Wives Choir with Gareth Malone reaches the Christmas number one in 2011, outselling the rest of the top 10 combined.

Worst of times Being bullied at school. "I was always on the edge of exploding into violence. But I never did because I always somehow didn't want to lose my dignity."

What he says "I love classical music above all other forms but I like something frivolous in the morning. I don't want to be one of those people who has disappeared into the past."

What others say "As profoundly a moving piece of television as has ever been made." Deborah Ross of the Independent on The Choir.

"He's a human tuning fork, resonating at whatever frequency is needed." Lucy Mangan, the Guardian.