Aargh! My wife’s snoring is as loud as a plane!
She’s as noisy as a low-f lying Jet — and her husband hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep for 30 years. Earplugs in to meet...
JUST as Eskimos have 50 words for snow, so Colin Chapman thinks we should have an entire range of expressions for ‘snore’. ‘It’s so vague, isn’t it?’ he snorts. ‘People say to me: “Oh my partner snores . . .” But that can mean anything. Snoring can be a bit of a murmuring in your sleep. It can also be making the sort of noise that takes the roof off. ‘There really should be a special word for the type that woke me at 1.58am today. It was like a trumpet call to a herd of elephants. I reckon we know at least 50 different types of snore.’
When he says ‘we’, he means him and his wife, Jenny, who has an unusual claim to fame — one she’s a little embarrassed about, and one Colin isn’t quite sure whether to be proud of or not.
For Jenny Chapman is officially Britain’s loudest snorer. How does one get such an accolade? Well, six years ago, after decades of disrupted sleep and banishment to the spare room, Jenny, a retired bank worker, sought help and enlisted herself in a boot camp for chronic snorers.
Her snoring levels were recorded and the decibels measured. To her astonishment — ‘ but not bloody mine’ points out Colin, who sounds a touch like Strictly’s Len Goodman, and has the patience to match — her snoring was as loud as a low-flying j et, zooming i n at a remarkable 111 decibels.
Colin, who has shared his wife’s bed for more than 30 years, is still crowing about the fact that such ear-piercing levels were recorded and made official.
‘I was vindicated,’ he says. ‘All those years I’d spent saying to her “Blimey, Jenny, you sounded like a fighter jet” — and I was proved right.’
Rather hilariously, the pair live under a flight path and Colin is something of an aeroplane buff. He can not only confirm that his wife’s snoring sounds like a jet, but can pinpoint exactly what sort of jet it resembles.
‘You know when a fighter suddenly pulls up, when the engines are on reheat and you get that roar, followed by a crackle?’ Er, no.
‘Well, that’s exactly what Jenny sounds like. When I hear it happening for real, I dash outside to look up at the sky. In the middle of the night, I just sit up in bed and say: “What the heck was that?”
‘Even after 30 years I still do a lot of saying: “What the heck was that?”. You imagine all sorts — a bomb exploding, the roof coming in, the world ending.’
Can he describe some of Jenny’s other snores, for comparison? He gives a great theatrical sigh.
‘Oh well, where to start? There’s one that’s like the roar of a lion. One that’s like the trumpet of an elephant. Sometimes she does that thing that orangutans do. Quite often we’ve got a bloody zoo in here’.
Alas, for all her official loudness, Jenny is a touch quiet today, but when she does get a word in edgeways, she gives as good as she gets.
‘Can I just point out that Colin has been known to snore, too,’ she says. ‘Although his snoring is quite amateur. He can’t compare with me.’
Is she proud to have the title, then? Yes and no. ‘When it all happened I was a bit mortified,’ she says. ‘It’s embarrassing. Most women don’t like to think they snore.
‘But in a way it was good to have it recognised properly because it’s meant we can’t help but talk about it, and be open about it. When friends come to stay now, we warn them that they won’t get a wink of sleep.’
Jenny has always been a champion snorer. By the time she was nine — and sharing not only a room but a doublebed with her elder sister — she was well used to having it pointed out.
‘The first memory I have of it was waking up with my sister pinching my nose to stop me making so much noise. So it was always there. It got worse the older I got.’
Jenny was in her early 30s when she met Colin, who has three sons from a previous relationship. When they started living together, the boys became alarmed at noises permeating from the master bedroom.
‘On the first morning, Colin came downstairs and the boys said “Dad, you weren’t half snoring last night”, assuming it was him. I had to say: “Er, sorry lads, but it was me. I have been known to snore.”’
Still, there’s snoring and there’s snoring. Colin tuts at how, no matter how many times friends and family are warned that Jenny snores, they all fail to appreciate how badly.
‘No one who has slept in the same house ever offers to share a room with me, but one friend did recently when we went on a weekend away to see Michael Bublé,’ says Jenny.
‘I said to my friend: “But you won’t sleep.” She said: “Don’t be ridiculous.” She said she usually dropped off listening to music, so she put her headphones in as I drifted off.’
And? ‘Next morning, she said she hadn’t slept a wink!’
Since Jenny was crowned Britain’s loudest snorer, the Chapmans have been touched by the hand of celebrity, finding themselves the object of much curiosity.
On one occasion, a Japanese film crew arrived to spend the night at their house, which Colin concedes was ‘one of the oddest things that has ever happened’.
The sound engineer, he explains, set up camp in the spare room, with miles of cable and rigging strewn across to their bedroom.
‘He said to me, in all seriousness: “If the batteries go in the middle of the night do you mind me crawling round your bedroom floor to replace them?” ’
Did the Japanese company get their film? ‘Yes, we have it on DVD, but we don’t speak Japanese so we don’t understand any of it.’
It’s not just programme makers who have been after the Chapmans. Snor- ing (or more accurately trying to stop snoring) is a multi- million- pound industry, with companies all over the world vying to come up with the miracle ‘cure’. And who better to try to heal than Jenny, who has long said that she doesn’t expect ever to be free of her curse.
Mostly the Chapmans have scoffed (and snorted, in Colin’s case) at the endless stream of devices that have come through the door.
‘We have tried everything,’ admits Jenny. ‘I’ve tried the sprays down the throat, those plastic strips that you put across the nose. Nothing has worked.
‘We’ve gone lower tech, too, trying to strap a tennis ball to my back so that I can’t sleep on my back. That doesn’t work for me either because I don’t only snore on my back — I can snore while sleeping on either side.
‘ I don’t ever sleep on my front, but I’m sure I could snore in that position, too.’
They have sought medical advice, and an operation to remove excess tissue at the back of Jenny’s throat was mooted.
‘Results on other people haven’t been great, though, and I was nervous about
‘She can make a noise just like an orangutan’ ‘I kick her, elbow her — even tip her
out of our bed’
doing something that wasn’t going to work, or might work for only a while,’ she says. ‘ We had a f riend who went through it — and all for very little difference.’ Recently, though, they have been trying a device that — whisper it, because it is still early days — might actually be having an effect. Called The mute, it is a tiny plastic contraption at that fits inside the nose and is designed to open up the airways. Supported by the British rower Steve Redgrave, another extreme snorer, it started life as a sports aid, helping athletes to get more air into their lungs with each breath. Soon the potential for use as an anti-snoring aid was spotted. Jenny was sceptical about this one, too, when manufacturers asked her to test it. She duly inserted the device and went to sleep. The next night, she did
the same. And the next night. Eventually, Colin said: “Have you been using that thing?” I said I had. He said: “Well, it must be working because I’ve had a few good nights’ sleep in a row. I haven’t wanted to kick you out of bed once.” ’
Will it make a long-term difference? ‘I don’t know yet. It’s certainly made everything less loud. I imagine that if you aren’t as loud a snorer as I am, then it might “cure” you, but it’s definitely the best thing I’ve tried so far.’
Much as we might laugh at Colin’s account of living with such a loud snorer, there is a serious point to the Chapmans going public with their story.
Every GP knows how much stress having a chronic snorer in the house puts on families.
The constant sleepless nights can put couples under unbearable strain and even lead to divorce. Colin understands why.
‘In a way, we have been lucky, because we’ve been able to build our lives around it rather than letting it destroy us. I think being open about it is a big part of it. Some people are still embar- rassed to tell their partner they snore — and how much.
‘We’ve adapted to take account of it. We cope by one of us going to the spare room when it’s totally unbearable, and we’ve invested in a very good bed for that room. We’re lucky to have a spare room, or a choice of them. There are only two of us in a four-bedroom house.
‘And — it sounds trivial, but I’m being serious — it’s a solid house: detached, built-brick, with no hollow walls. If we lived in a flat, well, I honestly don’t think I’d be able to manage. The big dread is ending up in a retirement flat. I don’t think we’d be able to do that,’ he says.
‘I think I’d have to have one flat in the West Wing, and she could have one in the East Wing, and God help the poor souls in between.’
Colin understands, too, why nonsnoring partners can reach breaking point, overwhelmed with the irrational rage that comes in the wee small hours when you have a herd of elephants in the bed with you.
‘I’ve kicked Jenny during the night. I’ve elbowed her, probably a bit too hard. I don’t think I’ve ever left a bruise, but at 2am, when you are in that semi-comatose state, I don’t think you are thinking: “How hard is too hard?”
‘I’ve even tried to tip her out of the bed, because at 2am it seems like the only way to get her to take herself off to the spare room.
I’m not proud of that. I’ve also been known to flounce off to the spare room myself, pulling the duvet right off the bed as I go, so that I leave her getting cold.’
He seems sheepish about this one; Jenny simply smiles.
‘I sleep like a log. I don’t usually notice. But yes, we sleep apart more than we do together.’
I ask why they start off in the same bed if it’s inevitable that one will end up ‘flouncing off ’ in the middle of the night.
‘Oh, there’s no telly in the spare room, but there is one in our room,’ says Colin. ‘We often watch something before we drop off.’
Neither of them is claiming the new addition to their bedroom — the plastic Mute — will change things for ever. There have still been ‘elephant stampede nights’, says Colin, even with it inserted.
But if it does mean Jenny’s going to have to relinquish her record-breaking title of Britain’s loudest snorer, then she’s happy to do so.
‘I don’t notice a thing,’ she says. ‘I sleep like a log’