My Life: Georgia Horsley

The former Miss England has been deaf in her right ear since contracting suspected meningitis when she was two years old.

“I remember telling my mum when I was three that when I lay on my left side in bed I couldn’t hear anything. She just thought that I was playing up at bed time,” says Georgia, 26, from Norton, North Yorkshire.

So it wasn’t until she started school at the age of five that Georgia was diagnosed as being deaf in her right ear.

“At school it was sometimes difficult. You don’t want anything that makes you different but when I struggled to hear I’d get put to the front of the class and I would ask a lot of questions because I hadn’t heard everything. There was one girl who would call me ‘stupid’ because I kept asking questions. But I did have a great group of friends and they’d stick up for me.”

When she was ten she went for some tests and was told that she could benefit from a hearing aid.

“They said I’d have this device in my ear with a wire going over my head and down my back into a battery pack. There was no way I was going to have that.”

So Georgia got used to only being able to hear in one ear.

“It didn’t stop me doing anything it was just difficult, especially in a crowded place with lots of people talking at once as I would really struggle to hear what people were saying,” she says,

“People would also think I was rude. If they were on my right side I just wouldn’t hear them but if they didn’t know me they would think I was being rude and ignoring them.”

But she has never let it hold her back, although she had never planned to become a model.

“I wanted to be a make-up artist,”she confesses. “I wanted to be behind the camera not in front of it.”

It was her mum who suggested Georgia enter the Miss York competition which she won, gaining her entry to the Miss England beauty pageant which she also won in 2007.

“I have never regretted entering Miss England, in fact I think it was one of the best things I have ever done. Not only did I have an amazing time, but it really opened a lot of doors for me.”

She kept her hearing loss quiet at the Miss England trials but after not hearing her number being called at the finals, she decided to tell people about it

She now has a successful commercial modelling career doing television adverts, magazine work and catwalk.

It wasn’t until a few months ago when she was approached by a hearing aid company, Phonak, and asked if she would try their Nano device, that she had ever thought about having another hearing aid .

“I thought ‘why not?’ I didn’t really have anything to lose. I knew if I didn’t like it then I didn’t have to wear it.”

Although Georgia realised technology had moved on, she wasn’t prepared for just how much.

“The Phonak Nano is tiny. It just sits inside my ear and no one can see it.

“As soon as they fitted it I couldn’t believe it. It was like having super powers.

“I could hear everything for the first time in years.

“It made me realise what I had been missing,” added Georgia.

And when she walks down the aisle next year and Danny stands on her right side she will be able to hear him say “I do”’.

Listening to the facts and figures

About 800 million people around the world are affected by hearing loss.

Only about a third of all people with hearing loss are of retirement age.

On average, people with hearing loss wait almost 10 years before they do something about it.

More young people experience hearing loss, which is mainly due to excessive noise levels and listening to music much too loudly.