Ben Shephard has been praised for offering support to Chris Kamara.
The Good Morning Britain star sat alongside the legendary sports pundit as he spoke about suffering from apraxia on This Morning yesterday. Known to many as Kammy, Chris opened up on the impact of living with the speech condition on the ITV daytime show.
Kammy first spoke out about his condition in March after fans messaged him to ask if he was okay as he appeared on Soccer Saturday. Following his health update, he made the decision to leave Sky Sports after 24 years, reported MEN.
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Kammy has since stepped back from other work commitments but is back with a new ITV documentary, entitled Chris Kamara: Lost For Words. Appearing on This Morning to chat to host Alison Hammond and Dermot O'Leary about the show, Kammy said "today is a good day" but prior to his diagnosis, he admitted: "I thought, I’m going to wake up one day and it’s all gone."
Discussing his diagnosis, he said: "It was in 2019 but I told no one, you know when something isn't quite right. I knew if I spoke in long sentences, I couldn't get the words out. I thought I'm going to wake up one day and it'll all be gone.
"I went to see the doctor in 2020 and they done tests and it was an underactive thyroid. It cured my thyroid but the delay of not seeing the doctor sooner caused issues. Then the speech issue came along which could have been the thyroid, but we don't know.'"
He went on to say: "We take for granted when we speak, it’s natural but the message from [my] brain somehow gets confused and the words come out wrong, or they come out slow… or they don’t come out at all.
"My voice was my life so that was hard to accept. That’s why I kept it quiet, I thought there’s no way I can tell anybody. I continued doing programmes and all of a sudden, people are tweeting me or asking my friends, ‘Is he ok? Is something wrong with him? Is he drunk? He’s slurring his words, he sounds slow’. That’s when eventually my good mate here [Ben] got me to spill the beans on GMB."
Ben, who joined Kammy on the sofa, said: "He was naturally very concerned because what Kammy doesn’t want is for him to feel the victim, for anyone to feel sorry for him." Complimenting his friend, and Ninja Warrior UK co-star, Ben added: "He is a national treasure. Going out with Kammy is like going out with Justin Beiber, it’s a nightmare.
"You can’t go anywhere without people stopping him for photographs or pictures, they all just want to say it, and that’s been really lovely for him to see that warmth and spirit." He later said: "You're throwing everything at it, that’s the point, everything and anything you can.
"Fortunately Kammy is in a position where he can do these things as well and the problem is that not everyone that’s going through this has that opportunity, because they can’t afford it or they don’t get offered the chance to go and try it.
"That’s the most important thing for me, and we’ve talked about this a lot, for Kammy right now, the most important part of what he’s doing is trying to help people out there that don’t have a voice, that potentially could benefit from." Discussing the upcoming documentary, Ben added: "It’s full of hope and optimism and that’s what we want people to take from it."
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