“It was like being drunk”: KT Tunstall on hearing loss and vertigo episode artwork

EPISODE · Aug 5, 2026 · 48 MIN

“It was like being drunk”: KT Tunstall on hearing loss and vertigo

from Access All: Disability News and Mental Health · host BBC Sounds

International hit-maker KT Tunstall wasn't sure what to do when she woke-up mid-tour to discover she had lost her hearing and had vertigo. Soon after she turned to her brother for support. He has been deaf his whole life, and jokingly told her he would “take out his tiny violin” for her which, she says, helped to put her hearing loss into perspective.KT’s hearing loss remains. The Scottish singer-songwriter is back with a theatre show called The Singer which she wrote the music for. It charts the friendship between a D/deaf performer and a hearing musician, focusing on the bass and the beat so D/deaf audiences can enjoy it too.Hands up if you rely on holiday clubs and camps to get your kids through the summer holidays? Three recent reports have highlighted parents of disabled children often don’t have this as an option. We meet Stephanie who struggles to work while caring for her disabled son while Shumi got so frustrated by a lack of options for her two kids she took matters into her own hands and created her own club. Plus we also hear from Harriet Edwards from the charity Sense which is calling for a national framework to help with the problem.Emma Tracey also chats with Beth Rose about the latest on the The Timms Review, which is looking into the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) system, and Jimothy gets a look in too – he’s the disabled racoon who went viral.Presenter and producer: Emma Tracey Series producer and presenter's friend: Beth Rose Sound mix by Neil Churchill Editor: Damon Rose

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Aug 5, 2026

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“It was like being drunk”: KT Tunstall on hearing loss and vertigo

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