Tuesday, 29 November 2005

Guitarist Graeme Duffin entertained and enlightened during his lecture

Friday 18 November saw the Wet Wet Wet guitarist Graeme Duffin visit the school to give a lecture as part of the Talking Points forum. Graeme did not, however, give a standard lecture, but spiced things up with two superb performances, as he demonstrated his world-class guitar skills.

The entire S6 and elite school guitar students were lucky enough to be in the audience to hear how Graeme got into music and how he ended up as a member of the Wets. In addition to describing his musical career, Graeme also recounted his battle to control and overcome his speech impediment. His stammer made it even more impressive that he could come and talk to such a large audience for a long time with great fluency. His speech was a tribute to the hard work he has put in to overcome his impediment, attending sessions run by the McGuire Programme, which helps stammerers and eventually progressing to being an instructor for the programme. To show how much he had progressed he played a video of a past TV interview in which he struggled to find words. The difference was astounding.
 

"I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture", said Anna Cameron [S6C], "and thought the guitar demonsrations were awesome. Mr Duffin was obviously very brave to come and talk to us with his stammer, but he did a superb job!"

Philip Morrison [S6H]

April 2005

Thu 6 may 2004

No impediment to success

Marcello Mega 
 Last year, Wet Wet Wet guitarist Graeme Duffin celebrated his silver wedding anniversary with a big party. The highlight for him that day was to take the floor and make a speech singing the praises of his wife - something he wanted to do, but had not been able to, on their wedding day. 

Duffin, now 48 and still working in the music industry five years after the band’s last performance, has been affected by a life-long stammer. Just over four years ago, he discovered the McGuire Programme, a course "run for stammerers by recovering stammerers". It has had as profound an effect on the last four years of his life as the speech impediment had on four decades. 

Duffin says: "I actually engineered and planned my whole wedding around my not speaking. There was no way I could make a speech. I managed the basic minimum to get through the service. I just about managed ‘I do’, but it was a struggle. There was so much I wanted to say about my wife, about how happy I was, but I just couldn’t. 

"I’m now looking forward to my daughter’s wedding this summer and I’m actually relishing my responsibility as father of the bride, speech and all. Before I discovered the McGuire Programme, I would have had a black cloud hanging over me. I would have been unable to take part in her joy because my fear of making a speech would have represented such an ordeal. I would have been wrapped up in my problem." 

The McGuire Programme was set up a decade ago by David McGuire, an American who had to quit his homeland because his stammer made it impossible for him to find work there. He moved to Amsterdam where he developed a number of techniques to help him cope with and overcome his stammer. These were principally concerned with breathing correctly, using a technique called costal breathing - similar to that used by opera singers and some athletes. 

He launched the programme in Amsterdam in 1994 and brought it to the UK the following year. Since then, an estimated 2,000 Britons have signed up, attending four-day courses around the country and establishing local support groups that meet every fortnight. 

The most famous Briton among that group is currently Gareth Gates, the Pop Idol star. Gates, 19, from Bradford, sings fluently, but as viewers discovered when he was vying with Will Young for votes in the first Pop Idol contest, speech is a problem. 

Both Duffin and Gates were among a group of 55 stammerers on a recent McGuire course, run over four days at a Stirling hotel. Given Gates’s current level of celebrity and the interest shown in his movements by the tabloid gossip columns, his presence in such unremarkable surroundings seemed somewhat incongruous, but he blended in with no fuss. 

Watching Gates and the rest of the group practise the breathing techniques that enable them to control their speech, and go through a series of exercises that help them grow in confidence, it becomes clear that there is a natural bond between them. Gates’s problems with speech are only different from those of the two police officers on the course, or the rape victim among them whom he has since befriended, because he has to face his fears in the spotlight. 

Gates admits that his stammer was a massive hurdle to overcome when he was considering embarking on a career that would put him under the spotlight. 

He says: "I’d always been able to sing fluently, like most people who stammer. Also, I’d been classically trained, so although I was unaware of it at the time I was already doing some of the right things with my breathing in order to project my voice. 

"But as everyone with a stammer knows, the problem tends to get worse when you’re under pressure. Putting myself up to perform before massive television audiences, to be interviewed and voted on, was an ordeal. Thankfully, the support I had from the McGuire Programme and its members helped me through." 

Like Duffin, Gates became aware he had a problem as a young child. Duffin moved from London to Glasgow aged seven and was very aware of sounding totally different to everyone else in the school playground. He already had a stammer, but the hesitancy he developed when speaking as he tried to concentrate on "not sounding so different" made him worse. 

Gates, growing up in his native Bradford, did not have to contend with that additional problem of feeling like an outsider in the community. Like most stammerers, he learned to avoid certain words and sounds, a habit he still had as a young adult with ambition to have a career in music. 

His first experience of the McGuire Programme was on a course in Liverpool in August 2001. He says he has no doubt at all that it changed his life. But when fame loomed a year later, it almost knocked him off course. He admits it was a hard lesson to learn, and he is now driven by the fear of repeated failure and a relapse back into stammering. 

He says: "I picked up the technique quite well and for a while after that first course, I worked hard. 

"But after Pop Idol I had to move away from Bradford for work reasons. My career took off. I got very busy. Then speech stopped being a top priority in my life. 

"My career and my love of music became my Number one priority. I had to seize my opportunity then, grasp it with both hands. I soon learned that the moment you make your speech take second place in your life is the moment things start to get difficult and you relapse, and I did. 

"I wasn’t putting the time in. I felt I didn’t have the time to put it first, and my speech suffered. But over the last six months I have put my speech higher up, and it has been evident to me that as soon as you do that, and as soon as you want the improvement so much that you start to put the work in, the rewards follow." 

One of the things Gates has done differently over the past few months is to take his McGuire voice coach, Michael Hay, on tour with him through Asia and the UK. 

Hay says: "Learning to speak fluently when you suffer from a stammer is like a sport. You have to work at it every day to get better and better. We all hope that we’ll get to the stage where we no longer have to think about it. For some people that might take two years, for others it might be ten. 

"But almost everyone feels the benefit after their very first course. Once the basic breathing techniques and speaking within the group have been mastered, all the newcomers are asked to go out with experienced members and confront what is normally their worst fear, speaking to strangers, asking for directions and the like. On the last day, everyone takes a turn at getting up on a soap-box in the street and making a short speech. Most people make fairly dramatic progress and if they keep doing the work, they keep getting better. Gareth is an excellent example of the spirit this type of work promotes. It would be easy for him to duck out now because of his celebrity, but he wants to keep contributing and he is always among the most enthusiastic in praising and supporting newcomers." 

That camaraderie is strongly underlined by Gates’s growing friendship with fellow stammerer Julie Brooks. A personal fitness trainer, Brooks, 23, from Whitburn, was raped two years ago while on holiday in Greece. Her attacker, a man from Yorkshire, was charged by Greek police but the case was later dropped, the courts taking the view that the case amounted to one person’s word against another’s. 

As a result of the attack Brooks, whose attempt to raise civil proceedings against the man on her return home was thwarted by lack of funds, found her stammer becoming far worse. At times, she was incomprehensible. So the programme, when she learned of it, threw her a lifeline. Gates, who is her dedicated voice coach, has been a particularly invaluable support. 

"Gareth really takes time to listen to you," Brooks says. "The fact that he is so successful gives us all a lift. It shows you can overcome a speech impediment and make a success of your life. 

"You might see a picture in the paper of him on stage in London, or abroad, and his life seems a million miles away from your own. But it’s not unusual for your phone to ring at these times and it’s him asking how you are. 

"He was incredibly friendly from the very start. The first time I was on a course, I was pleased when he came and sat by me. He was just natural and got on very easily with everyone. 

"I really appreciate that he takes the time out to support me and coach me. He’s a big help, an inspiration, but most important of all he’s a nice guy who cares about others. 

"The whole environment of the programme encourages team-work and an awareness of the problems other people have, and Gareth fits into that very easily." 

As Duffin prepares for his family wedding, he is adamant that anyone with a stammer need not resort to hiding away from the world. He says: "About ten years ago, BBC Radio was making a documentary about Wet Wet Wet and we were all to take turns at being interviewed. As ever, I held back. The rest of the band, the manager, the tour manager and various others all went in before me. 

"I spent two hours with the interviewer and we both tried really hard, but at the end of it all, they just couldn’t use any of it. Eight years after that, after I’d been on the programme, I was to be involved in another BBC Radio documentary. I went into the studio and it was the same interviewer. He was very nice, but I could see his face fall. But this time, he got what he needed with no bother. 

"I’d been using the techniques for some time by then, but the remarkable thing is that even if I’d gone on the course for the first time a week before, the result would have been the same. The benefits are immediate." 

* Information about the McGuire Programme is available at freedomsroad.org, via mail or tel 0191 413 9100