Chris Kamara has said his speech diagnosis has left him feeling like someone else is in control of his voice box.
The commentating legend was flooded with messages from concerned viewers after an appearance on Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday back in March. The 64-year-old was covering the League One match between Rotherham United and Shrewsbury Town when fans following the programme noticed he appeared to be struggling with his speech.
Mr Kamara had been diagnosed with apraxia of speech - a condition that leaves sufferers with difficulty getting their lips, jaw or tongue to move in order to be able to communicate the words they want to say.
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The broadcaster took a temporary break from the show, before deciding in April that the 2021-22 season would be his last on the programme. Despite leaving Sky Sports, a decision he maintains was made at the right time, Kamara continues to work in broadcasting, the Mirror reports.
And the 64-year-old has opened up on the challenges brought by his condition. Mr Kamara told The Diary of a CEO: "It feels like someone has taken over my voice box.
"The voice that used to come out would come out at 300 miles an hour, you’ve seen me on the results and Soccer Saturday, motormouth, talking and not even waiting for a breath, just keep going and going. Now when I hear myself or see myself on TV it’s someone else. It’s really strange.
"Some days the message from the brain to the mouth is really slow and makes it difficult, or some days the words come out different than what you’re trying to say and that’s even weirder. So that’s been hard to accept, and [is] still hard to accept."
Mr Kamara said he believed the time was right to leave Sky Sports after "a great innings". However, with the apraxia of speech impacting his other work - including giving him anxiety about delivering lines on broadcasts when not feeling like his old self - he considered walking away from TV altogether.
He continued: "I have to say, I was going to quit everything - literally every single bit of TV - at the end of last season. It was an acceptance, really, because what I said to my wife is if I wasn’t a broadcaster it wouldn’t matter, would it. She said ‘yeah’, so I said now’s the time. I’ve had a great time.
"I spoke to my agent Simon, said I’m getting out of all this and he said ‘yeah, you can, I’ll leave it up to you’. So I thought ‘that’s it, I’ve done my time’. I’d like to thank all the people who have been persistent and said a 25% Kammy is still better than some people."
Since leaving Sky Sports, Kamara has begun hosting Kammy & Ben’s Proper Football Podcast with broadcaster Ben Shephard. Guests on the BBC Sounds show - which aired for the first time in August - have included Leicester City manager Brendan Rodgers and former England boss Sam Allardyce.
Shephard was one of the friends who Mr Kamara confided in before going public with his diagnosis, and shared details in an interview with him on Good Morning Britain. Before that appearance, the ex-footballer had been attempting to hide the extent of the situation, even keeping things from close friends and family.
He said: "My boys had been saying to my wife ‘there’s something wrong with dad’ for a while, and she’d broach it with me and I’d be quite snappy, which I’m not anyway, and say I’m fine. It’s harder for people close to you, I think.
"I’d say [to my boys] I’ve just had a bad day, don't worry, I’ll be fine, but they know. You can’t pull the wool over their eyes for too long."
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