When Sherrie Hewson popped to her local optician for an eye test, the last thing she expected was to be told she was going DEAF.
But after her check-up, a test showed the Benidorm star’s hearing has deteriorated so much with age she now has to wear hearing aids in both ears.
She said: “That’s when I remembered my eight-year-old granddaughter Molly saying: ‘Nana, why are you always shouting?’.
“I’d had a test five years ago but I’d done nothing about it.
“It would have been different if it had been my eyes. But there’s a stigma attached to being deaf, isn’t there? Wearing an aid makes you feel like an old person.
“They solved any stigma attached to glasses by making them funky. They’re like a fashion accessory now. I know people who buy them with plain glass in them.”
But hearing aids have advanced apace, too. “They’re so small you can hardly see them and especially if you wear your hair to your jawline. I had the wire dyed to the colour of my roots which hides them even more.
“I couldn’t believe the difference. I can hear everything now. I’m only wearing them at home at the moment. I tried them outdoors but the traffic was too loud. It was a shock.
“What people don’t understand is that, if you’re deaf, it’s not the volume that you miss so much as the clarity. I must have spent half my life lip-reading without realising it. I was forever accusing the family of mumbling.
“It’s also made me realise how loud I have my telly. And the radio in my car practically blew me away with my hearing aids in.
“You can’t restore any hearing you’ve lost but you can slow down the deterioration by wearing your aids whenever possible rather than turning up the volume on everything. You’ll damage your ears if you do.”
Appearance is important to the 68-year-old whose soap career peaked as supermarket boss Reg Holdsworth’s dizzy wife Maureen in Coronation Street in the 90s.
In 2004, she was filmed for a C4 documentary, 10 Years Younger.
She said: “You saw the fatty deposits cut away from under my eyes. You saw the surgeon removing flesh to tighten my jaw. And you saw acid being painted on my face to help peel off the top layers of skin – and all my freckles, too, as it turned out.”
She wasn’t frightened, she claims. “I’d always maintained I’d be fine about plastic surgery. As long as I’d researched it properly and I didn’t wake up looking like Jackie Stallone, it would be OK.”
On the day of the operation, though, her attitude changed. “I was lying on the trolley waiting for the injection to knock me out and I suddenly burst into tears. A wave of sadness swept over me.
But the bitter tears she shed had little to do with the surgery.
Sherrie was crying over the break-up of her 28-year relationship with a man she had loved and lost as he pursued a succession of other women.
In 1983, she had married Ken Boyd, five years her junior, who worked as a British Aerospace manager. Daughter Keeley was born a year later.
She said: “Ken had a string of affairs, all of which I found out about. I asked him one day if he still found me attractive. He looked at me and said, ‘You look fine. For your age.’ Those last three words killed me.”
Hence the radical cosmetic surgery. What about recent reports that she’s had another facelift? “Not true. I was misquoted. It was reported I had body dysmorphia.
"That’s a mental condition when you become obsessed about a particular flaw in your appearance and go to great lengths to correct it. Well, that’s not me.
“Yes, I’d like my neck lifted. And I wish the skin on my face was smoother. So I might have Ultherapy, which is lifting the skin without cutting it.”
There are plenty of examples, she said, of older actresses who look terrific but haven’t sacrificed their ability to register emotion courtesy of the cosmetic knife.
She said: “Look at Joan Collins or Dawn French or Jennifer Saunders. They all look wonderful. And what about Joanna Lumley? I’m sure she’s had little nips and tucks. But she looks, well, absolutely fabulous.”
But it doesn’t work for everyone. “Did you see Madonna on Graham Norton? Those tiny shorts! That bustier with everything spilling over the top! On the other hand, she’s Madonna.
She may be 60 but we sort of expect her to look a bit outrageous. I bet she doesn’t look like that when she’s shopping in Sainsbury’s.
“Come to think of it, I don’t suppose she does a supermarket shop.”
She and Ken divorced in 2011 and haven’t spoken much since. “But Keeley asked both of us to walk her down the aisle when she got married and that was lovely. Anyway, you can’t go through life hating someone.”
Wigan-based Sherrie is pretty clear about romance. “A man can always get a partner if he wants and usually someone 20 years younger than him. The same isn’t true for a woman.”
Take Chris Quinten, another ex-Corrie veteran, although they never overlapped. He’s just got engaged to a 21-year-old, fully 40 years his junior.
And yet Sherrie will not judge him. She said: “We know what’s in it for him and, presumably, she knows what she’s doing.”
That said, she admitted to having a problem about ageing. “It’s harder and harder to look in the mirror every day when you’re a woman nearing her 70th birthday and particularly if you’re in the public eye. Thank God for air-brushing!”
But whatever decision she makes, she always likes to present her best face to the world. “I wouldn’t take the rubbish out without wearing lipstick and mascara. My mother was a model. She taught me that.”
Since her marriage imploded, there has been no man in Sherrie’s life.
“I miss the companionship, someone to accompany you to the theatre, someone to be waiting at home who you can tell everything about your day.”
Doesn’t she miss the physical intimacy? She said: “I did. But it’s something your mind gets used to.
“I know that sounds sad but there’s nothing to be done about it.
“Now I have Keeley, though, and my three adored grandchildren. They are my life’s great joy. They fulfil me.”
She also has her work. She’s just finished nine months on a UK tour in Benidorm Live. “I wanted to be free for when the new baby, Rosie, arrived a month ago.”
What about ITV’s Loose Women on which she appeared regularly for 15 years? “I’d be back there like a shot if they asked me. I love my girls and I miss them. But I was spending six months of every year filming Benidorm in Spain.
“So, two years ago, I took a break. Carol McGiffen and Denise Welch both took five years out; Coleen Nolan took a three-year break. I’m sure I’ll return at some stage.
“Oh, I’d climb the curtains if I didn’t work,” says Sherrie Hewson.
