Buckingham voice coach becomes unlikely internet star after Billie Eilish duet goes viral

A 58-year-old vocal coach from Buckingham has become an unlikely internet star after the multi-award-winnning singer Billie Eilish filmed herself singing along to one of his videos on TikTok.

Sheridan Coldstream was fairly new to the world of the video-sharing app TikTok when he posted a clip of himself duetting with the Billie Eilish song Listen Before I Go, as a way of sharing performance ideas with students.

But he was ‘gobsmacked’ when the artist herself posted a video of herself duetting with him – sending Sheridan’s TikTok following through the roof.Sheridan said: “The fact she should choose to duet her song with me is extraordinary really, it’s great. And the icing on the cake to me is that she took my direction about how to sing it and sang her own song differently to how she normally does, which was amazing.

“It’s just exciting that someone like her can see something I’ve posted and choose to musically engage with it from the other side of the world. I was gobsmacked. But what I didn’t realise was that it would spiral and produce so many stories.”

The video went viral, the story was picked up by the national and international press and Sheridan was interviewed by the BBC.

Now Sheridan’s career is taking off in new directions at a time of life when many people are thinking of winding down.

Sheridan, who has in the past coached students for TV programmes including The Voice and X Factor, now has a top-secret TV project in the pipeline, with offers of corporate work flooding in.

He said: “It’s all been completely crazy to be honest. It’s really exciting at 58 to be ‘living the dream’. And just when you think it’s all going quiet, it all goes mad again.

"I was well established and busy and earned a comfortable living teaching singing for a a good 25 years, with the odd bit of this bit of that, bit of BBC. And now this is on a whole new level really. So I’m riding the wave."

Sheridan, who used to teach at Stowe School, lives in Little Tingewick with his wife Deborah, a drama teacher at Stowe.

A former volunteer with Banbury Samaritans, Sheridan is more than just a singing teacher, describing himself as a vocal and confidence coach.

He said: “My singing business developed while I was a Samaritan. It developed a need to understand how people tick and to realise that we can all learn to feel better and take our masks off that make us pretend to be something we’re not.“It’s hugely about confidence and self-esteem. You’re quite vulnerable when you sing – it’s just you and your voice, so its very much developing self-belief, confidence.”And despite his new-found fame, for now at least, Sheridan’s not giving up on the day job.

“The actual coaching from my studio in Little Tingewick is still my bread and butter, that’s how I earn my living,” he said.