Radio de Michael Ball

Michael Ashley Ball (born 27 June 1962, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire) is an Olivier Award winning English actor, singer, and radio and TV presenter who is best known for the song "Love Changes Everything" and musical theatre roles such as Marius in Les Misérables, Alex in Aspects of Love, Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Edna Turnblad in Hairspray for which he won the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for best actor in a musical.[1][2] Ball was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England, of a Welsh mother, and an English father. Ball's father trained as an Austin apprentice at the Longbridge plant and went on to become a successful business man; although, he had originally wanted to be an actor. Ball's maternal grandfather was a coal miner. His maternal grandmother was protective of the family. Ball has a sister about nine years younger than himself. He moved to Dartmoor with his parents when he was three years old. He has never had singing lessons, but as a boy he learned to sing by singing along to music; for example, songs by Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, and Frank Sinatra. When he was 11 years old he went to Plymouth College, an independent boarding school, because his parents thought this would give him a good education, but he did not fit into the academic and sporting environment at the school at that time, and he was unhappy there.[1]