What a difference a day makes: Eurovision singer Tommy Swarbrigg on his hearing loss journey

Together with his brother Jimmy, Tommy Swarbrigg represented Ireland twice in the Eurovision Song Contest in the 1970s. Tommy — a music promoter for stars like Nathan Carter and Smokie — tells Helen O’Callaghan about how his years in music had an unfortunate physical legacy in the form of hearing loss — and about the joy of finding a way to restore this

Tommy Swarbrigg: 'Maybe 14 years ago, I noticed my hearing deteriorating badly, my left ear worse than my right. I was in quite a lot of pain.'

All through my musical days, when I was a full-time musician, I had fantastic hearing. I took it for granted.

The trouble was that I spent most of my time in the studio, finishing off, mixing recordings, for hours. Sometimes 16 hours in a row if I was mixing three or four songs on an album — too much, but I didn’t realise.