In an instant, one small bird shattered Bill Oddie’s world. “I was with a fellow birdwatcher on Hampstead Heath four years ago when it happened. A meadow pipit, which makes a soft high-pitched ‘seep’ sound, was going over, but I simply didn’t hear it,” says Britain’s best-known bird watcher, and one of the original presenters on BBC’s Springwatch series.
“I’m usually very quick to spot a bird, you often hear them before you see them, and my friend was really surprised and said, ‘but that call was really clear’. I just knew right then that my hearing was going – I can’t tell you how depressed I felt.”
At first, Oddie, who found fame on television in the surreal comedy sketch show, The Goodies, in the Seventies, characteristically tries to make light of this sorrow.
“I know it might sound a bit trivial and daft – ‘the man who found that he couldn’t hear pipits’,” he says, almost apologetically.
But then he admits the truth.
“Actually it was devastating. For me it was the first sign that a door was slowly closing on a world of sound and beauty that I loved so much. In many ways birdsong has been a soundtrack for my life.”
Shaken Oddie, 72, returned to his home in Hampstead, North London which he shares with his wife Laura, 61, and daughter, Rosie, 26, and tested out his hearing by playing the recordings of high-pitched calls of certain birds. To his despair, his fears were true; he couldn’t hear any of them.
It was an unbearable moment for a man who prided himself on having such acute hearing, coupled with an encyclopaedic ornithological knowledge, that he could recognise the call songs of most British species.
“One of my favourite memories is one night, as a young student at Cambridge, standing in the college quad and suddenly overhead there was a huge migrating flock of birds. I couldn’t see a thing as it was pitch black but I just stood there calling out name after name of every species above me – identifying them simply by their sound,” he says.
Dreading discovering the true extent of his hearing loss and reluctant to face up to ageing – the numbers of people with impaired hearing rises sharply from the age of 50 – Oddie shrank from seeking help until three months ago, when he went for a free hearing test at Specsavers.
“I’d suspected everything wasn’t quite right because I’d have trouble hearing someone speak if there was a lot of background noise, and my wife got irritated when sometimes I didn’t answer when she spoke to me and I rarely answered the door when the doorbell rang.
The reality, as I now realise, is that often I simply couldn’t hear her or the bell. But hearing loss is gradual and you just tend to adapt and kid yourself you’re not really missing much, ” says Oddie, who has two elder daughters from his first marriage, and three grandchildren.
An audiologist at Specsavers played bird songs specifically to investigate Oddie’s concerns, and found his hearing loss related to high-pitched sounds. He now has aids, which sit discreetly at the back of each ear.
“It was like flicking a switch and all those British birds had come back into my life.
Of course, the most special was a week ago, hearing that meadow pipit after such a long gap, and I was the first of my friends to spot it which was so satisfying,” he says, beaming.
As a result, Oddie’s encouraging everyone over 50 to have a hearing test. “Get yourself tested because you may not be aware of what you are missing, and it’s so silly to waste time like I did when the aids are so good and not noticeable at all,” he says.
“The hard fact is that from the age of 50 onwards, your hearing does begin to deteriorate, and often it affects the top frequencies first. It’s silly that while it seems all right to wear glasses, I wear bifocals quite happily, hearing aids seems to fall into the same category of stigma as walking sticks and frames and chairlifts. It makes you feel you are old and worse, you feel other people will think you are old. I realise now that’s wrong and causes a lot of unnecessary suffering.”
Oddie has also overcome the crippling depression which saw him admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2009, after he was dropped from Springwatch – he had worked on the series from its launch in 2005. He was finally diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder, a condition where depressive periods alternate between manic activity, and thanks to effective medication, lithium and anti-depressants, he has not been unwell since then.
He does admit to a lingering sadness that his days on Springwatch were cut short and today rarely watches the programme.
“I very much miss it,” he says fondly. “But when I do see it, it brings back many happy memories and I like to think I contributed to its success.
“It’s still so well-loved and helps encourage people to enjoy the natural world. That’s all to the good because I fear so many people wear earphones for their phones and music players that increasingly they miss out on everyday joys like birdsong.
My plea to people would be to ‘go naked’ occasionally – take off those earpieces so you hear nature and, of course, birdsong. You may not realise how precious it is until it’s gone.”
Oddie certainly takes his own advice, and – when he’s not travelling the world working for charities and groups concerned about protecting birds, nature and the environment, or reprising the now cult humour of The Goodies (last year he toured Australia with a one-man show) – he likes nothing more than enjoying nature by working in his garden.
“Any psychologist looking at my garden would say ‘that doesn’t belong to a normal person’ – even my wife says it’s ludicrous,” he says chuckling about the space filled with a quirky assortment of gnomes, plastic birds and his hand-made miniature tropical settings.
“But it’s my sanctuary, where I encourage as many bird species as I can to visit. I can sit for hours listening to their songs and calls. I try to pick out key phrases or patterns of notes, because parts of just about every song ever written can be heard in the songs of birds.”
Bill Oddie is spotlighting age-related hearing loss and encouraging people to treat their hearing as a regular part of their healthcare routine. For more information, or to book a free hearing check visit www.specsavers.co.uk/hearing