As a child, Steve Howgego loved to sing. His favourite teacher at primary school told him he did it beautifully. But at home, he was too loud for his mother, who said he sounded terrible. Howgego believed her, and it took him years to find his true voice. Now, at 66, he is an operatic street performer.
Howgego, who grew up in Hartlepool, County Durham, has a strong sense of the life that might have been. He once overheard his father say: “We should send him to Durham [Chorister] School.” But his mother dissented. “Had I gone there, my career would have taken off,” he says. “I could sing like Aled Jones, but more powerfully. He was recognised because he went to a cathedral choir. That would have happened to me.”
Secondary school was not a happy place for Howgego, who became what he calls “the naughty boy”. He tried cannabis but fainted. His dad took him to the doctor, then a psychiatrist. “I clung to the hope of singing,” he says. “I got an acoustic guitar and I would try to sing, but there was a psychological block.”
Over the following decades, any time Howgego found a place for himself, he struggled to keep it. He dropped out of his degree course, and got a job as a trainee computer programmer. From there, he went to London, where a headhunter told him he should be working for an investment bank. “I nearly fell to the floor. We were told in grammar school that those jobs were for public school people.”
He won promotions, and moved with his boyfriend to France. He worked for Citicorp and bought himself some singing lessons. But the shine came off the job – “I was an overpaid accountant, more or less” – and he was on the move again.
Back in London, Howgego experienced the first of two turning points. He had a conversion to Christianity while watching the film Jesus of Montreal at the cinema. “When Christ said: ‘Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’ I just burst out crying,” he says. He felt drawn back to his youth, and returned to church. “My life was at a dead end. I’d done a job I hated. I had a failed relationship. What was I going to do now?”
Someone suggested Howgego try gospel singing. In 1991, aged 33, he joined London Community Gospel Choir. At around this time, he learned from his father that his great-great-grandfather was a Nigerian preacher who had come to Hartlepool. In some ways, joining the choir and going to church was like a second childhood. Howgego sang “with the voice of a seven-year-old; it had been dormant for so long”.
Other singers helped. He grew in confidence and ability. But when his sister, with whom he was close, was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the start of the century, Howgego had a breakdown. He felt he was “not on this Earth. I lost my appetite. My mind was like a zombie.” For five years, his voice left him again.
His second turning point came during therapy sessions at St Thomas’ hospital in London, where he made a friend, who also sang.
Later, when lockdown hit, his friend suggested he try busking; opera was the best earner. Howgego by now was unemployed and struggling to pay his mortgage. “I thought: ‘Why don’t I have a go?’”
Under Southwark Bridge in London, or on Clapham Common or at the bandstand in Ruskin Park – where he still performs on Wednesday lunchtimes – Howgego sang opera. Donations from passersby enabled him to keep his home. But their appreciation opened up other possibilities.
“It’s been an education. I have gradually learned the Verdi operas, Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. I’m learning Madama Butterfly. It’s something I was born to do, like destiny.” Now the phrases he hears most often are: “You made my day” and: “You have the voice of an angel.”
“What I have found by trusting in my abilities is that one positive thing leads to another,” Howgego says. He has collaborated with other creatives – an artist, a film-maker – and is working on a play of his experiences.
He had worried that in his 60s his body “would be shutting down, not getting stronger”. Instead, his voice is opening out and reaching higher notes. “Something inside me says that I’m going to end up as a Pavarotti tenor,” he says. “Sometimes you have an inkling that change should be coming.”
