‘I hated everything about religion - but then God called me home’

Things felt normal growing up. But when I reflect on it now, it was a very unhappy place. My parents were always shouting and arguing. 

It was almost a lie. We were living in a pantomime play. We’d go to weddings or family parties and play the role of a family, but the minute you got back in the car, everything would fall apart again. It was back to Mum and Dad hating each other.

I was in the church choir for three years. Then a convicted paedophile joined our church under a fake name and joined the adult choir. He basically volunteered for anything he could, including the younger choir, and that was enough to arrest him.

All sorts of chaos and disasters were going on in that church. People were having affairs with one another, all at the same time as my parents’ marriage was falling apart. I was about eleven when we stopped going to church. 

I was just a kid. I thought: How can you tell me there’s a God when, in the house of God, all this stuff is going on? I hated everything to do with religion. If you came to my table with a Bible, preaching to me, I was there for a fight.

Lost in music 

Around 16, I started writing songs and gigging. I entered this competition – Jack Wills Unsigned – and got to the final. I really wanted to win it. I asked my friends, Sonny and Tay, if they’d help me because I was up against bands. We sang a song that I had written called ‘Lovesick’ and won.

After the gig, everyone was saying: “We love your band! What’s your band called?” But we weren’t a band. We went back to college and thought: Should we become a band? In my second year, the boys came up to me and said they wanted to leave college and take the band seriously. So that’s what we did. 

Our manager introduced us to someone who said he’d sent our stuff to Sony. They really liked us, he said, but asked if we’d be interested in going on Britain’s Got Talent as a way in. At first, we said no. He kept coming back, saying: “They want you.”

We thought that if we didn’t go on the show, we’d miss the moment. All we wanted was a record deal. So, we did it. We [Loveable Rogues] got signed and I was living my dream.

I was semi-famous by my 21st birthday, earning loads of money, had all the clothes, all these girls wanting to sleep with me. My parents and step-parents had to say: “Wow, well done.” I thought: You didn’t think I’d be here. That was my energy.

Then I got dropped from the label. The mortgage fell through. All these little daggers started coming at me. I even begrudged the band, because I wanted to go after this on my own.

I was getting drunk all the time just to forget life existed. I didn’t have anyone I could speak to who actually knew what I was going through. 

Peace in high places

My dad had moved to North Wales, and I went to see him. I decided to move up there and start again. 

I’d go up into the mountains and just cry, struck by this sense of peace – the birds flying, the sea in the distance. It was so beautiful. I wanted to find that peace in my life.

I started watching The Story of God with Morgan Freeman and learning about the common threads throughout history. Civilisations that didn’t know each other all talked about a god. You can’t say God is rubbish when people across human existence, who never met, were all praying to something from above.

Then, I started writing a musical about a god who isn’t perfect, who has anxiety and makes mistakes. I thought: If I’m going to write about this, I need to learn more about it. I started reading the Bible. I realised that I couldn’t finish the musical because I needed to learn so much more. Then, I was at a wedding and met this beautiful girl. She told me she wouldn’t go out with anyone who wasn’t a Christian. I said: “That´s funny because I’ve been reading the Bible.” 

She took me to a Bible study in Broxbourne. Visiting different churches gave me structure. Even when that relationship didn’t work out, I kept going. I went to Nashville, Tennessee and found a church that I loved. I thought: If I could find something like this in London, it’d be a bit of me. Then I walked into Christ Church Spitalfields, and it’s been my home ever since.

The more peace I found, the more connection I found. I started ending up in places I wanted to be, and fewer places I didn’t. I just keep following that. Prayer nights, worship nights, reading scripture. 

The most fulfilling times are often praying with people I’ve never met before; there’s such power in that. It gives human existence a meaning. Before, it felt like it was all about me and how much I could gain; now it feels like it’s truly about connecting with other people.  

Eddie Brett was speaking to AJ Gomez