Owais Khan On Stammering, Silence And Fatherhood
The model who found his voice by staying silent
Owais Khan couldn't speak English when he arrived in England from Pakistan at six years old, and he had a stammer on top of it. School after school followed, bullying followed him too, and sport became the one place he didn't need words to be accepted.
That same stammer later pushed him toward modelling, where the job was to stay silent and pose, and it carried him onto Sky's reality show Desi Rascals, now streaming on Netflix. Years later, after a run of career highs in LA collapsed during COVID, he hit a point he'd never told anyone about.
"How many times you going to do it before you finally actually go I can't do this anymore," he says of that period. Therapy pulled him through it. Today he's a stammering ambassador for the charity STAMMA, mentoring young people through the same struggle, and a father raising his daughter to never be afraid to speak.
Quotes
"How many times you going to do it before you finally actually go I can't do this anymore."
This Episode Is About
Owais Khan talks about growing up with a stammer, moving to England unable to speak the language, and the bullying that followed him through four different schools.
He explains how sport gave him a way to be accepted without speaking, and how that same silence later took him into modelling and onto Sky's Desi Rascals. The conversation turns to what happened when his career stopped overnight during COVID, the breaking point that followed, and the therapy that brought him back.
He finishes on fatherhood, his work as a stammering ambassador, and what he wants his daughter to know.
Who This Episode Is For
- Men who hide a stammer or speech difference
- Fathers raising a child with a stammer
- Men who've hit a breaking point after success
- Men who've never told anyone they were struggling
- Sons of single fathers
- Men of colour navigating dual expectations
What You'll Takeaway
- A stammer isn't weakness, it can become a strength
- Sport can be a stand-in for words you can't say
- Fame collapsing overnight can trigger a breakdown
- Asking a man "are you okay" once isn't enough
- Therapy works when you finally find the right person
- Fatherhood can hand back what burnout took away
- Everyone carries scars, the goal is being honest about them
