Due to the success of one of the musical projects that I’m currently involved in, I’ve had some pretty incredible opportunities recently. This has, however, really highlighted something about myself that I find very strange

Last week I performed live on Radio 1; approximate listeners… upwards of 3,000,000. This weekend just past I played shows in front of thousands of people at V Festival. Here’s the thing: was I particularly nervous for either of these things? Well… no. Not beyond a few twinges. I mean, usually I hate live radio, it’s just so inexorable but even there I felt OK.

I’m not bragging, trying to tell everyone how much of an iceman I am because really and truly, I’m not. If you’d have seen me sitting in a car not so long ago trying to talk to a girl that I like, barely being able to force out a word without stammering or simply gurgling total nonsense you’d see what I mean.

Nothing can compare the situation I face, the stuttering mess that I became in that situation. Singing, there’s no number of people I could stand in front of, or be transmitted to, that would match the terror, the absolute conversational helplessness I feel when faced with such a person… and it doesn’t get better.

Not that it happens very often… very seldom, in fact. 

Not that I’d change anything… when else do you feel so alive?

I suppose that when it comes down to it, with music and the job that I currently do, I know that I can do it. We, the band, have rehearsed it to the perfect level, honed it over a number of live performances and whenever I walk onstage with them, I know that we’re where we need to be. I can just go out there and do something that I personally know I’m good at; not only that but I’ve done it before, time and again, I’ve proved to myself that it’s OK.

So therein is the oddity that struck me onstage the other day. I’m never more nervous than in front of a single person. Seems like the wrong way around to me but that’s the way it goes hey? Some things never change…

Photo credit to Charlie!: http://instagr.am/p/Kw5pX/