I don't
want dyslexia
to be
an issue. 
Kristian Leontiou
can barely read or write - but he's about to release his first album. Joe
Muggs reports Kristian Leontiou is a young lad with a pierced chin and
a fondness for baggy jeans. Raised
in one of the rougher corners of north-west London, he bypassed school in favour
of snooker, karate and motorcycles.
Yet Leontiou, 22,
is a performer of sensitive songs. In the past, record industry executives have
told him that rap or rhythm and blues better suits his background, but he has
persevered with the music he loves - "just great songwriting; Phil Collins, Lionel
Richie, people like that" - and, with his 1st single due to enter the charts this
weekend, he looks set to reap the rewards. His
creative success is the result of fierce dedication and an unwavering urge for
selfdetermination - even when it seemed he might go off the rails. Because
of severe dyslexia, he is barely able to read or write. "I didn't feel like school
was for me," he says. "The
teachers knew about my dyslexia - they picked it up in primary school. They
didn't treat me as if I was stupid and they offered me help for it. But
that just wasn't what I wanted to do." For
Leontiou, going to school grew less appealing as academic demands were made of
him that he struggled to fulfil. "The
teachers would ask me to stand up in front of the class and read something out,"
he explains. "I hated
it so much because I just couldn't do it, so I started ducking out of those classes.
After a while, I
realised that I could stay off other classes, too, and by the time I was meant
to be at secondary school, I just wasn't going at all." Though
many teenagers in similar circumstances might have become resentful and dropped
out of society, too, Leontiou channelled his energies into projects that didn't
involve reading and writing. He
learnt to race motorcycles and play snooker, both to a semiprofessional standard,
he worked in a hairdressing salon, and he spent many hours every day focusing
his attention on songwriting. Two
years ago, he attracted the interest of music publishing bigwig Mike Sault, who
hooked him up with the husband and wife songwriting team Pete Wilkinson and Sarah
Erasmus, with whom he co-wrote most of his debut album, Some Day Soon, which is
released next week. "For
me, writing songs is a very slow process," he says. "Someone
has to write down the lyrics for me as we come up with them, then I have to learn
them line by line.
"I have to take each couple of lines and look at them over and over to be able
to read the words, and once I've got them, I can take them away and memorise them."
However, the singer
is pragmatic about his dyslexia. "I don't really want it to be an issue," he says.
"I mean, it's not
that important. But when the recording deal came about, I decided that the record
company should know I was dyslexic, in case I was ever asked to read cue sheets
on stage or on TV." An
estimated 10 per cent of people in the UK suffer from dyslexia to some degree,
and many find that as well as hampering their ability to read and write, the condition
also affects their shortterm memory, their ability to solve mathematical problems
and their concentration and organisational skills. Fortunately,
most schools, colleges and adult literacy programmes are now attuned to spotting
the signs, and the days of dyslexic children being branded stupid or lazy are,
for the most part, over. Specialist tuition enables students to make good progress.
"I know other dyslexic
people who've got help, studied hard and done well. I know dyslexic people who've
given up, and I know people who've pretended to have dyslexia and used it as an
excuse," he says. "But
I haven't become a musician because of the dyslexia, or to prove anything - just
because I thought I could make a success of it." May
29th 2004. Original
story. With thanks
for this story to the excellent Daily
Telegraph. | 
