SPEAKING TO actor William Roache, it's a struggle not to call him Ken. Though his voice sounds slightly posher than Coronation Street's longest standing resident and his alter ego Ken Barlow, it's unmistakably the same one which has filled our sitting rooms for more than 50 years.

“My father did it once and it was quite extraordinary,” says the actor of being called by his screen name.

“The show had been running for a few years and I was sitting at home watching it with them and when it finished he said, ‘Oh, put the kettle on Ken’. And I thought right, okay, if my own father can do it, I’m never going to worry about it.”

In Coronation Streetsince its first episode, Roache has grown from young buck to sensible, cardigan-wearing Ken, but clocking up no fewer than 25 on-screen girlfriends in his time, including Joanna Lumley and Stephanie Beacham, there's no denying his Casanova credentials.

What fans might not realise, however, is that the actor William Roache lost 50 per cent of his hearing before his acting career ever began. It’s something he says makes being an actor the perfect job.

“When I was in the army aged 21, I was a lieutenant put in charge of the three-inch mortar platoon,” he explains. “That’s the one where you see them drop the bomb and they all get down and it shoots its mortar off.”

On the practice range one day, a bomb that failed to explode though charged and stuck inside the tube, led to disaster.

“This guy got hold of it and very enthusiastically pulled it upright and it then went off.”

After the incident, Roache says, “I couldn’t hear at all, there was just a buzzing in my ear and I thought, ‘Well it’s bound to a happen, it will get better’.”

His father, a doctor, examined his eardrums, but Roache says, “What we didn’t realise was the extent of the damage that had gone on inside. So we didn’t do anything and I didn’t report it – otherwise I might have had an army pension.”

Though his hearing started to improve after a while, what he didn’t realise was that 50 per cent of it was permanently gone.

Joining Coronation Streetto play an 18-year-old university student, though he was by then a 28-year-old ex-army officer who had served in the West Indies, Germany and the Gulf, Roache says his hearing loss didn't influence his career choice.

“It never made me become an actor,” he says, and he feels he’s never been in any way disadvantaged by the loss, except perhaps in some social situations.

“Things like going to a ball where there is music playing and you can’t hear, and in some conversations with people, I would miss important words.”

And he admits, “You can make a bit of a fool of yourself from time to time. I’d walk past people and the children would say, ‘Daddy, that person just spoke to you, you’re being arrogant,’ because I wouldn’t hear what they said.”

It was only about 10 years ago that Roache learned just how severe his hearing loss was, when he eventually had a hearing test. The advice to get hearing aids brought mixed emotions.

“There was a natural resistance that makes you feel you are old and incapable, but they are a wonderful help,” he says.

Wearing them in just some social situations, they haven’t yet got an outing in the Rovers where he says he doesn’t need them.

“I couldn’t be in a better profession really, because when I’m working, the words are scripted and I know what people are saying.

“Actors tend to speak with a bit of clarity too because people have to understand what they are saying, so I’m in an okay business really.”

But when he does wear them, he says they have brought back some sounds he’d be quite happy to do without.

“When I put the hearing aids in, I can hear things like people putting a knife and fork down on a plate or paper rustling – things I wouldn’t normally hear. In a way, I don’t like it. I sort of got used to my own fairly cosy little cotton-wool world.”

For other situations, however, the hearing aids that he has are invaluable. “I’d like to have discovered them sooner because there have been certain situations when I desperately needed them.”

While he says he is not in the “bad” category, he feels for many, hearing aids can be life transforming

“The big thing is, it tends to be treated as humour, deafness. You’re a bit of a joke, but people don’t realise how isolating it is.

“You tend not to go places where there is a lot of background noise and avoid certain situations and, if you’re really bad, you’ll often avoid just meeting people because you are worried about looking foolish and not hearing what is being said. If you’re not careful, it does tend to make you withdraw and that isn’t good.”

Roache says his own hearing loss never “removed” him from life, but for others he says hearing aids, “can help them get back into life and back into associating with people, which is what life is all about”.

Is he ever bitter about what happened? “Not at all. It was an accident. It’s not stopped me doing what I wanted to do. It has affected my life in certain ways socially but I know that help is there and that help can be wonderful.”