{"id":35313,"date":"2026-05-13T10:28:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/35313\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T10:28:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T10:28:18","slug":"good-morning-britains-ed-balls-says-its-a-nightmare-as-he-details-personal-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/35313\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Morning Britain’s Ed Balls says ‘it’s a nightmare’ as he details personal struggle\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good Morning Britain’s Ed Balls and Susanna Reid touched on a recent campaign being run by STAMMA when the ITV star opened up.<\/p>\n

10:37, 13 May 2026Updated 10:38, 13 May 2026<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/p>\n

Ed Balls opened up on his personal struggle(Image: ITV)<\/p>\n

Presenter Ed Balls <\/a>opened up on his personal battle during the latest Good Morning Britain.<\/a><\/p>\n

The ITV<\/a> star was speaking to BBC Traitors contestant Jessie Roux regarding her involvement in the campaign, Don’t Hang Up. Hang On.<\/p>\n

Detailing more about the campaign, which is organised by the charity STAMMA, Susanna Reid<\/a> highlighted that people who are call handlers often hang up when there’s a long silence on the other end of the line.<\/p>\n

Jessie added, “It is hard because I’ve had it where I have been hung up on, and ‘H’ is hard. Like,’ Hello’ on its own is a nightmare.”<\/p>\n

Ed replied: “I can’t do H’s! From the autocue, every now and again, and there is one, it’s a nightmare!”<\/p>\n

The BBC<\/a> star aired her frustrations when she tries to get her words out on the phone and the other person hangs up.<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/p>\n

Ed Balls spoke to Jessie about her campaign with STAMMA(Image: ITV)<\/p>\n

She added: “It is hard, it’d help if people would just wait, that is all any of us ask, just wait. We’ll get there eventually.”<\/p>\n

Over the years, Ed has been open about his stammer as he confessed he didn’t realise he had one until he was well into his political career.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until 2009 that the presenter went public about his battle with a stammer, before he became a patron for the British Stammering Association a year later.<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/p>\n

Ed became public with his stammer in 2009<\/p>\n

Speaking about presenting on Good Morning Britain<\/a> back in 2021, he commented: “Sometimes it goes wrong, but that’s fine, we all are a little bit in-fluent in our speaking in normal life.<\/p>\n

“But the idea that I could be on Good Morning Britain, looking at the screen, reading the auto-cue and getting through a morning like this with all this noise in my ear. Twelve years ago, I would be in meltdown, and in fact today, loving it!”<\/p>\n

The ITV star was moved to tears during the show not too long ago speaking about his Stammer with Gareth Gates.<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/p>\n

Ed Balls was emotional when speaking with Gareth Gates<\/p>\n

He thanked the Pop Idol singer for inspiring him to speak openly about his own stammer. In 2024 commented: “You inspired me. I thought, ‘If Gareth Gates can do this, I can too.<\/p>\n

“And if he can be public, I can be public too. It was really hard, but I did it because you showed me how to do it.”<\/p>\n

As he got teary, Gareth stood up and embraced Ed into a hug as Susanna commented: “Nothing to be ashamed about, it’s part of your identity, isn’t it? He broke the ground for you, didn’t he, Ed?”<\/p>\n

Good Morning Britain is available to watch weekdays on ITV from 6am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good Morning Britain’s Ed Balls and Susanna Reid touched on a recent campaign being run by STAMMA when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,8195,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-35313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-ed-balls","10":"tag-good-morning-britain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116566799459461587","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}