Good Morning Britain hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls were left tearful as Educating Yorkshire star Musharaf Asghar appeared on the ITV morning programme.
The 26-year-old, known as Mushy, featured on the Channel 4 reality show ten years ago working to overcome his stammer.
Mushy developed a severe stammer when he was five years old, following an asthma attack, which left him struggling as a pupil at Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury.
However, his teacher Matthew Burton helped him to overcome the speech impediment, with Channel 4 viewers watching Mushy through his English GCSE oral exam, when he delivered an end-of-term speech in a school assembly.
Good Morning Britain played a clip of the emotional speech, which left students in tears as Mushy’s teacher Mr Burton cheered him on from the side-lines.
Susanna and Ed were similarly left tearful at the clip, as they welcomed Mushy into the studio a decade later to congratulate him on graduating from university with a degree in broadcast journalism.
Susanna said: “Congratulations Mushy. Honestly, I feel like a proud mum. What was it like for you to watch that back?”
He replied: “It’s an amazing thing watching it back,” and then jokingly added: “I always wish, ‘If only I had a haircut at the time’. That’s something I never really took into account. I thought it would be okay, but it really wasn’t at the time.”
As the conversation turned to the impact of his teacher Mr Burton on him, Mushy said he would not be there without the support he received at school
He said: “I can't sit here and say, ‘I did this and achieved this’, without expressing how important it was having Mr Burton – it’s weird I still call him that – but having the support I did was huge.”
He continued: “It was just about embracing who I truly was. As a kid, I used to hide away from all these speaking opportunities.
“I hated that I had this problem that made me seem like I couldn't really achieve anything at all.
“He made me own it and say, ‘It’s okay, we don’t need to find this magical cure, it’s just about accepting who you are’. It gradually changed how I saw who I was as a person.”
Good Morning Britain then surprised Mushy with his teacher Mr Burton, who called into the ITV programme from his classroom to congratulate him on his success since leaving school.
He said: “When you get into teaching you want to genuinely make a positive difference every day.
“I’m sitting here listening to him and I’m incredibly proud of the young man he has become.
“We were fortunate that moment was captured on some cameras and then went out on Channel 4, but that happens every single day, every single moment, every single lesson.”
He added: “I’m blown away by the young man he has become. I’m incredibly proud of him, that goes without saying.
“Everything we as teachers try to instil in young people to have a positive impact on the world, he’s showing that in spades.”
