Look Who’s Talking

(Above is a black and white image that Ian created using Gemini Ai. It says Hello, do you remember me?)

People often assume that because I’m blind, I must have some sort of built-in superpower. The kind where I remember every voice I’ve ever heard, no matter how long ago it was. Countless times someone’s come up to me and said, “Oh, you should remember me! We spoke twenty years ago when you interviewed me in Aberdeen.”

And I’m left thinking, how on earth am I supposed to remember that? It’s not as if I’ve got a neatly labelled voice archive in my head.

Even with people I know well, I don’t always place who they are just from a single “hello”. Sighted people have the advantage of taking in the whole picture. The face, the setting, the body language. Me, I’m relying on sound alone. If someone speaks briefly and I’m not expecting them, it can feel like trying to work out who’s talking when the lights are off.

That said, being blind does come with a useful get-out-of-jail-free card. If I don’t recognise someone, I can just bluntly ask who they are. Most people are perfectly happy to say, “It’s John!” and I can nod along as if I knew all along. I’ve reached the age where I’m not embarrassed about it anymore, though that wasn’t always the case.

If I mix up my producer and my cameraman because they both have similar Northern Irish accents, I joke with them. As long as one of them does what I need, I’m not too worried which is which.

Voices without context can throw anyone, but for us blind folk there’s another layer of confusion to work out. One moment really brought that home to me.

I was sitting in a Turkish restaurant in a small village, miles from anywhere, having a relaxed meal with some friends from London. It was the last place on earth I expected a voice from my working life back home. Then, out of nowhere, they said, “What are you doing here, Ian?”

I was completely thrown, it was a real blast from the past, I knew the voice, absolutely knew it, but I couldn’t place it. There was a Scottish accent, familiar but stubbornly out of reach. My mind was racing. Where do I know this person from? Why does this voice make sense but nothing else does?

It was only when they said their name that the penny finally dropped. I felt a bit daft, if I’m honest. I’d shared an office with her for years. But I was thousands of miles away, sitting in a quiet Turkish village, and she was the last person I ever expected to hear there. Without the visuals to help join the dots, my brain simply didn’t stand a chance. It actually made quite dizzy trying to figure out who this person was.

That moment stuck with me because it showed how much we all rely on context, not just blind people. Take away the usual setting and cues, and even the most familiar voice can suddenly feel like a stranger.

What complicates things even further is that I’ve become a bit more well known because of my TV appearances. People talk to me like we know each other, like we’ve chatted loads of times before. The truth is, we haven’t.

So now there’s a new puzzle to solve. Are they talking to me because they actually know me, or because they’ve seen me on the telly and feel like they know me?

I can find myself spending a few seconds asking gentle, probing questions, trying to work out what’s going on. Do I know this person properly? Have we worked together, met socially, crossed paths somewhere? Or are they just being friendly because they recognise me and fancy a chat?

I never want to offend anyone, so those first few seconds can be surprisingly delicate. I’m quietly scrambling to piece things together without making it awkward, using a few gentle questions to extract clues to who they are. My default position is to act as though I really do know them until I’m sure either way. It usually works. I hopefully come across as friendly rather than baffled, and it buys me just enough time to figure out what the situation actually is.

There’s another complication blind people have to deal with quickly too. It’s not just awkward ignoring someone who is talking to you, it’s answering someone who isn’t.

You’ll hear a voice in a bar or on the street say, “How are you?” You reply, “Oh, I’m fine, how are you?” only to realise they weren’t talking to you at all. They were speaking to someone just out of earshot, and you’ve wandered into the conversation by mistake. It’s a small thing, but it happens more often than you might think, and it always leaves an uncomfortable pause while everyone works out what’s just happened.

All of this comes back to the same thing. Context matters. Without it, voices float around untethered, and we do our best to grab hold of the right one at the right moment.

So if you know someone who’s blind, cut them a bit of slack. We’re not mind readers or walking voice encyclopaedias. Give us a hint, say your name, and we’ll get there in the end.

if you enjoyed any of this read and want to encourage me to write more, why not buy me a coffee no cake please, I am doing cake free January ! Hahaha

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