Chris Kamara opens up on living with Apraxia of speech on ITV’s This Morning - what it is & symptoms

Chris Kamara - known as Kammy to Sky Sports Soccer Saturday viewers - appeared on ITV’s This Morning to discuss new documentary Chris Kamara: Lost For Words.

Chris Kamara had ITV viewers in tears when he appeared as a This Morning guest on Tuesday. Known by many as Kammy for his Soccer Saturday days, Chris opened up about living with Apraxia of Speech.

The former professional footballer turned sports pundit, who quit Sky Sports in May after 24 years, discussed what it is like to live with the speech disorder and how he tried to cover up the condition. The ex-Leeds United midfielder first spoke out about Apraxia in March 2022 after concerned Soccer Saturday viewers contacted him to ask if he was ok following an appearance on the weekly show.

During his appearance on ITV daily daytime show This Morning, Chris opened up to hosts Allison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary sat alongside friend and Good Morning Britain’s Ben Sheppard. He said: “We take for granted when we speak, it’s natural but the message from the brain to the mouth 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 as I was going to wake up one day and it’s all gone. Today is a good day.

“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.

Chris Kamara continued: “I went to see the doctor in 2020 and they did 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.

“I thought there’s no way I can tell anybody. I continued doing programmes and all of a sudden, people were 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 Sheppard] got me to spill the beans.”

But now Kammy is set to return to the small screen as he aims to create more awareness of Apraxia with his very own documentary - Chris Kamara: Lost For Words.

What is Apraxia of speech and its symptoms?

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a speech sound disorder that affects people in a number of ways. It is a neurological disorder that affects brain pathways involved in planning the sequence of movements involved in producing speech.

People with AOS will have trouble saying what they want to say correctly and consistently. The brain knows what it is trying to say but is not able to appropriately plan and sequence the required speech sound movements to achieve it.

Chris Kamara quit Sky Sports earlier this year

There are two main types of AOS, which are as follows:

• Acquired AOS: Affect someone at any age, typically occurs in adults. It causes damage to the parts of the brain involved in speaking and leads to loss or impairment of speech abilities. 
• Childhood AOS: Present from birth, it is also known as developmental apraxia of speech, developmental verbal apraxia or articulatory apraxia. Studies and recent research finds that genetic factors are an influence and it affects more boys than girls.

People who have either form of AOS will have a number of different symptoms and speech characteristics. According to The Brain Charity, they are as follows:

• Distorting sounds. People with AOS may have difficulty pronouncing words correctly. Sounds, especially vowels, are often distorted. Because the speaker may not place the speech structures (e.g., tongue, jaw) quite in the right place, the sound comes out wrong. Longer or more complex words are usually harder to say than shorter or simpler words. Sound substitutions might also occur when AOS is accompanied by aphasia.
• Making inconsistent errors in speech. For example, someone with AOS may say a difficult word correctly but then have trouble repeating it, or may be able to say a particular sound one day and have trouble with the same sound the next day
• Groping for sounds. People with AOS often appear to be groping for the right sound or word, and may try saying a word several times before they say it correctly.
• Making errors in tone, stress, or rhythm. Another common characteristic of AOS is the incorrect use of prosody. Prosody is the rhythm and inflection of speech that we use to help express meaning. Someone who has trouble with prosody might use equal stress, segment syllables in a word, omit syllables in words and phrases, or pause inappropriately while speaking.

How to watch Chris Kamara: Lost For Words

Kammy’s new documentary Chris Kamara: Lost For Words will air on ITV1 on Wednesday (December 14). It will be broadcast live at 9.15 pm, but will also be available to those who can not catch it as it is aired on-demand via ITVX and the ITVHub.