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Ted Williams, a homeless man with ‘golden voice’, is given second chance

6 January 2011 by Gramilano 1 Comment

A US homeless man with a “golden voice” has been given a second chance after being discovered by a reporter in Ohio who put a video of him on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6kI_u3ho_c

A former radio announcer, Ted Williams, 53, had fallen on hard times, but – following an appearance on YouTube – has now got work doing voice-overs.

Mr Williams has travelled to his home city of New York to visit his mother for the first time in 20 years.

“I feel like Susan Boyle. Or Justin Bieber,” he told the Columbus Dispatch newspaper, who discovered him, on Wednesday. “It's almost choking me.”

Before being discovered, he was a beggar during the day, holding up a cardboard sign, and slept in a makeshift tent behind an abandoned petrol station at night. Mr Williams, who has been homeless for 10 years, says he has been sober for two years following drug and alcohol addictions.

He says he began drinking and using drugs in the 1990s and lost interest in his radio career, before ending up on the streets and becoming estranged from his family and children.

Graham Spicer version
Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.

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Filed Under: news Tagged With: New York

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  1. Avatar of Laura MannucciLaura Mannucci says

    6 January 2011 at 17:20

    wow! :-)))

    Reply

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GRAMILANO

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan, aka ‘Gramilano’. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times. He wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine.

Since 2022, Gramilano is pleased to welcome guest authors: Alisa Alekseeva, Paul Arrowsmith, Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel, Jonathan Gray, Marina Harss, Matthew Paluch, Jann Parry, Graham Watts, and Deborah Weiss.

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