John Simpson has lost 70 per cent of his hearing in one ear "I've never liked big parties much anyway, but now I avoid those things wherever I can," he said. You can see how irritated people get with you, having to speak louder and repeat everything. Even Rafe gets sick of having to say everything three times. He also said he regretted not having further operations to see if his hearing could be rescued. "After I was beaten up in Kosovo, my specialist told me I should have an operation to explore whether there was further damage to the eardrum and if it needed doing again, but I never have and I think I was stupid not to," he added. But Mr Simpson, 67, does find some small advantages to being hard of hearing: "When my wife asks me to take the rubbish out, for example, sometimes I don't catch that." And although the extent of the damage means a hearing aid would be of little help, he has no intention of giving up his front line job. Last year, he was among the broadcast journalists to report from Libya during the fall of the Gaddafi regime. "I'm not going to whinge about it," he said. I could have been killed, lost a leg or been blinded. In feel it's rather bad karma to complain about it.