How a bout of flu left Peter Stringfellow virtually deaf
Peter Stringfellow is not the kind of man who likes to offend. Having spent half a century gladhanding guests in his hugely successful nightclubs, image is everything to him and upsetting people is anathema.
Sometimes, however, he simply cannot help it. Such as the occasion when he was attending the Pride of Britain Awards and Tracey Emin caught him swapping her table place card with that of his wife, Bella.
'She wasn't very impressed, to say the least,' recalls the 69-year-old entrepreneur. 'Tracey was clearly under the impression I didn't want to sit next to her.
'I had to say: "whoa, calm down! I'm completely deaf in my left ear, so it would be completely pointless for you to sit there because it will ruin your night and mine."
'I think she was a bit surprised that i was so open about my deafness. But why should I be ashamed of it? It's not anybody's fault and if people can't deal with it, then it's their problem, not mine.'
'I'll be 70 in October and fully expect to live well into my 90s, but right now my body's falling apart,' he grins.
'I'm deaf in my left ear, now the other one's going, too. I've got a lazy left eye which is effectively useless and just lately I've started seeing spots in the other, which means I spend half the time looking around like I'm trying to catch a mosquito. Apparently, it's called black spot, it comes on with old age and I'm just going to have to live with it. So I can't hear and I can't see. oh, and I've got a dodgy knee, but I'm not going to let it get me down.'
Peter is speaking out to mark Deaf Awareness week in the belief he can offer hope to those in the same position.
Having been in the nightclub business since 1962, standing on stage alongside the likes of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, it's no great surprise that he suffers from hearing problems. Yet it was a flight in 1983 which first triggered the tinnitus - a constant ringing in the ear - and which has plagued him since.
He was on a plane to New York and coming down with flu and when his ears popped, he experienced a strange whooshing sound. But when the flu went and the sound didn't, his GP diagnosed his with tinnitus.
'That was the beginning of a journey which lasted two years. I went to doctor after doctor, eventually seeing this guy who sat me down and told me: "There is no cure. You've got to learn to live with it."
'Believe me, I was suicidal about it. You're doing anything to get to sleep - drinking, whatever - eventually you manage it and then you wake up and it's still there.
Most cases of tinnitus are associated with hearing loss arising from intense sound exposure, ageing or exposure to drugs, including aspirin.
Read more about Deaf Awareness Week at the RNID.
Source: Daily Mail
