Meet Louis Michael: The Gogglebox star introduces himself in the first of his exclusive weekly columns for Latest 7
Ever wanted to know what I was thinking without having to lower the volume on your TV? It’s time for your eardrums to have a break: you’re in luck.
I was known for shouting my opinions over the dinner table long before I was known for shouting my opinions over the television. But being the youngest of four meant having to wait until the more recent years until anything I said was actually listened to.
Alternatively, it may have something to do with going from the smallest to the tallest in the family; a 6’2” man is hard to ignore. At dinner times I would constantly try to break out of the annoying younger brother/baby of the family box, but the louder I got the tighter the walls of that box pressed. What I had learned on the playground, that decibel level dictates right to speak, clearly did not translate to the dinner table. This was a distressing realisation.
I learned that writing was the perfect outlet for a motor mouth like myself
During those earlier years, either in an attempt to journal the trials and tribulations of my young heart, or more likely during a school assignment, I learned that writing was the perfect outlet for a motor mouth like myself. In fact, paper proved to be a far better conversationalist than any of my family. It never interrupted and always let me finish, it was consistently a good listener, and best of all it had the uncanny ability of making me sound more intelligent.
With this revelation my family was gifted with a break from my incessant chattering (although by this time I’m told it was just background noise) as I turned more and more often to writing. When I wrote I found that it gave my voice a fluency and coherence that I only rarely struck on in speech. Given time to properly articulate myself, and seeing the rhythm of my thoughts in the structure of the sentences, meant that being left floundering for words was something I could gladly leave in the past. Never again would I be upstaged and left speechless at the dinner table — at least not in my written versions.
The idea that those early scribblings were the real beginning of something is humbling. I am so grateful to have this platform and I so look forward to sharing the churning of my brain cogs with you all. It’s taken 20 years but maybe I finally don’t need to shout to be heard anymore.
