Susannah Constantine has said that her hearing loss is an “indication” of her “rock ‘n’ roll past” but confessed that the diagnosis has left her feeling “isolated”.
The co-host of TV show What Not To Wear revealed that she began to realise she was going deaf when she could no longer differentiate the sound of birds.
Appearing on ITV show Lorraine, Constantine, 61, said: “There’s a huge amount of stigma around it (hearing loss), and I found that myself.
“I began to notice this and I did not want to admit to myself that I might be going deaf.”
Talking about what it was like to lose her hearing, she added: “If I was sitting next door to someone, I couldn’t understand what the hell they were saying and if they turn their back to me, and I couldn’t read their lips, I was stuck and I began to feel kind of isolated.
“I could see how frustrated other people were getting with me.
“But actually the moment of truth was when – I had this barrel which I sit in, in cold water – and I love listening to the birds and I realised that I couldn’t actually differentiate between the different birds and I pride myself on being a twitcher or whatever you call it.
“So I took myself off to Boots Hearingcare, who I’m now working with.”
While talking to host Lorraine Kelly, she showed off her hearing aids to the camera and said: “I’m so proud of them, I’m so proud of them, they are rock’n’roll and I think you know, we all lose our hearing and if we lived till we were 100 we’d all have loss of hearing.
“It’s just happening to be me a bit earlier, but I just think it’s an indication of my rock ‘n’ roll past and I am very proud of that.”
Constantine is married to Sten Bertelsen, the Danish entrepreneur and businessman, and they have three children together.
In 2018 Constantine appeared on Strictly Come Dancing and in 2022 she published her memoir Ready For Absolutely Nothing.