Eamonn Holmes
I have a positivity, a lust for life ... I don’t want to slow up
When broadcaster Eamonn Holmes turned 50, he threw a party. “And with all the hubbub and commotion, cutlery and crockery, music and conversation, I realised I was struggling to hear properly,” he says. “I was saying ‘Excuse me?’, ‘Pardon’ and ‘What was that?’ far too often.”
Not long afterwards, Holmes had a new earpiece fitted at Sky News, where he then hosted breakfast programme Sunrise. “The technician suggested I have a hearing test, so I agreed. You have to press a buzzer every time you hear high-pitched noises. I left the test having clicked it plenty of times and feeling great.”
So he was taken aback when the audiologist said that Holmes, now 58, had about 30 per cent hearing loss, in line with a man of his age.
He says: “I was reassured that was nothing abnormal, but it’s a lot to cope with. No one warns you that your hearing is going to go down from 50. People my age, we’re not ready for that. Learning a third of your hearing has gone is not the best birthday present.”
Today, when we meet in a London hotel, Holmes is huge fun, driven, self-confident (“I’m the world’s longest-serving breakfast TV anchor”) and yet self-deprecating – it’s impossible not to warm to him. Especially as he is always coming back to his adored wife, fellow broadcaster Ruth Langsford, also 58. How did she react to the news that he needed hearing aids?
“When I plucked up courage to put them in, I went for lunch with Ruth and just sat there. Eventually, I said: ‘Do you not see what I’m wearing?’ She said: ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’” Look at my ears, Holmes told her. “‘Oh,’ she said,” he laughs, “I thought you just had a big silver hair growing out of your ear.”
He adds: “Men and women suffer hearing loss equally, but she doesn’t seem to have a problem. Except when I don’t hear her and then she can get annoyed and it’s ‘Put your bloody hearing aids in!’”
Not that Holmes needs them all the time. Like many, he uses his aids for social gatherings, where background chatter can make it hard to understand conversations, or for watching films and television.
“It’s those cool American dramas, like Homeland. Someone says, ‘Who’s going to tell the president?’ And then the other person just mumbles away. And the picture changes every three seconds, so you can’t lip-read, either,” he explains.
And then there’s his 16-year-old son, Jack (Holmes also has three children Declan, 29, Rebecca,
26, and Niall, 24, from his first marriage). “I say to him, how can I hear every human being on the planet except you?” He laughs. “He’s got those low tones and he mumbles, and that seems to be my problem.”
Work is not an issue: at Sky, Holmes got most of his information from a computer screen. Now he is in charge of the Monday to Friday drive-time show on Talk Radio, he sits in a quiet environment and can concentrate with ease.
There’s no doubt that wearing hearing aids still carries a stigma. Holmes admits that he has been given the confidence to speak out by other celebrities of his age, such as Jo Whiley and Martin Kemp – both of whom have talked about having hearing difficulties. “These days, I’m frustrated when I don’t have my aids with me. I feel liberated by them,” he says.
He also wants to raise awareness of a link between hearing loss and dementia, as even those with mild hearing loss are twice as likely to develop the disease. Holmes has seen dementia first-hand: his wife’s father died of it in 2012.
Until a Specsavers audiologist told him so, Holmes had absolutely no idea that such a connection existed. “Anything that flags up a health condition such as dementia has to be
taken seriously,” he says. “Early intervention in so many conditions can either prevent decline, or preserve better health for longer.”
Holmes, who will receive an OBE for services to broadcasting on June 1, is at that point in life where it is time to take stock of the past, as well as consider how to make the best of the future.
He says: “I look back at the last 38 years and think: where did that go? I don’t feel any older than 25.
“Yet you get these big shocks. Dale Winton, Ray Wilkins, Eric Bristow have all died in the past few weeks at the age of 60 or thereabouts. My own father died at 64, of a heart attack.
“It puts you in a bit of a hurry to do things – see the Northern Lights, the Rio carnival, Mount Rushmore and have a look around Washington DC. I want to spend more time in Belfast. But if you are defined by what you do, if you suddenly stop, who are you really?”
Does he recognise that men have a midlife moment, a male menopause, if you will?
“Of course there is a mano-pause,” he says. “There is a natural decline. And I’m not a superman. But I have a positivity, a lust for life. I don’t feel that I want to slow up.”
He is particularly enjoying the welcome effects of lie-ins – he left Sky News 18 months ago and said farewell to 3am wake-up calls. “I am feeling the benefits. It’s not constant jet lag. When you have to get up at that time, you never really sleep well because you’re always worried about missing the alarm.”
Another recent health overhaul was a double hip replacement in 2016. “Not to have that awful debilitating pain in both hips is such a relief. Anyone who suffers from chronic pain will tell you how it affects everything. I’m a bit of a six-million-dollar man, aren’t I? All these bits replaced,” he says.
Holmes does have his challenges, however, not least – like many parents – steering Jack through his GCSES. “When I was his age, I supplemented everything I did with TV. If it was A-level geography, I would watch programmes about volcanoes,” he says. “I still advocate it as a way to educate. I say: ‘You don’t have to work harder, work smarter.’ I’m always strategic with things.”
How would he apply his mind to his native Northern Ireland and Brexit? “It’s very complicated,” he replies, suddenly serious. “People who didn’t care for us before are using us now. But we are an amazingly resilient people. Whether there is a new border or not, we will manage.
“I think there have been huge advances made in a borderless Ireland and they will find a way to keep it that way with new technology. There will be a way, there has to be a way.”
He is far happier expounding on a very different kind of union – maintaining a happy marriage. He and Langsford, who live in Surrey, have been together 21 years and married since 2010. His face lights up and he scrolls through his phone to find a message she had sent him that day. It reads: “Sorry for such a short response to your beautiful text earlier, love you.”
He writes “beautiful” messages? “I write her love letters in texts every day,” he says. “I wouldn’t be shy of telling her or telling anyone they look well, or brighten up a room.
“You need to pay each other attention. Ruth is a strong person, she is no one’s fool. We can bicker and row like anyone but deep down, we are sound as a pound because we have mutual respect. Every day, I tell her I’m in awe of her.”