SONG PLAYED AT THE BAFTAS

BILLY ELLISTON (RGS 2010-2017)

I played a lot of rugby and cricket during my time at RGS, and studied Maths, Economics and Government and Politics at A Level. I then went to the University of Nottingham where I studied Economics for three years. Having graduated in 2020, I had a year’s break, aiming to travel. Unfortunately, this was during the peak of COVID-19, so I spent a lot of nights in at home instead! In 2021, I started a job in strategy consulting at CIL Management Consultants in London and I’ve been working there for over a year.

Throughout my childhood I’ve always loved playing the piano. I never really understood why people did grades –I only wanted to learn songs from contemporary artists like Ludovico Einaudi. I started composing and performing my own music at the age of 13 (I was terrible!) – I remember boring my schoolmates with unnecessarily long songs!

I have never really taken music seriously as a career, but I’ve always really enjoyed writing music. I finally got to an acceptable level by my final year at RGS. I remember playing in the awards ceremony and a parent called Dan McGrath spoke to me afterwards, saying he thought we should record a few songs for his production company, No Sheet Music (nosheetmusic. tv). We recorded 11 songs in a studio and one of the songs, called Hope, was played at the 2018 TV BAFTAs. Since then, I carried on writing songs and, in 2022, I sent a few to Lisa Clark, who produces the TV BAFTAs). One of these was chosen as the soundtrack for the 2022 TV BAFTAs in-memoriam section.

I still compose songs regularly alongside my day job (although I experienced a few broken fingers in 2022 from playing football) and I am just about to sign an album with a record label!

You can find my music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/ 3yjN5RwsOOq0f4DBU6XDa1.