Source: www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk
Author: staff

For a man who had to learn how to talk again, there can be few greater tests than speaking on a TV game show beamed across the nation. But Maurice Paulson passed with flying colours – and won £18,000 and praise from Noel Edmonds in the process. The 81-year-old appeared on Channel 4’s hit show Deal or No Deal having been taught how to speak again following an operation on his cancer-ridden tongue.

Maurice said the show was great fun and that his appearance was a reward for the hard work Derby’s doctors and nurses had put in to help him recover. Although he speaks with a rasp, every word is intelligible as long as he speaks slowly and enunciates.

He said: “Noel said I was very brave for coming on. I didn’t think so at the time – if people don’t understand me now there’s nothing I can do about it. The crowd were brilliant though. I won £18,000 and they all came down from their seats and hugged and congratulated me.”

Maurice, of Stenson Fields, was stunned when he was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2004.

He said: “I had gone for a check-up because my neck kept swelling up and then going back to normal again. It’s not the sort of thing you imagine would be cancer.

“They asked me if I drank or smoked. But I gave up smoking decades before and, despite being a landlord for three pubs in my time, I’d never drank either.”

Maurice was immediately taken for surgery at the former Derbyshire Royal Infirmary. It proved to be a lengthy but successful operation, lasting 12-and-a-half hours and involving cutting away a third of his tongue.

That was replaced by part of his arm, which in turn was replaced by part of his stomach. But for Maurice, it was just the beginning of a difficult road to recovery.

He said: “At first I could barely speak at all. I was used to speaking fairly quickly and people couldn’t understand me. So I had to go to speech therapy at the hospital for about half-an-hour three times a week. They got me to record what I was saying so I could hear what I sounded like. I learnt to speak slowly and clearly enunciate all the sounds.

“All the doctors and nurses were brilliant. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

The speech therapy lasted for three months and Maurice has been constantly developing his abilities since.

Three months ago his wife, Jane, 56, suggested he go on Deal or No Deal.

The show involves 22 boxes with sums of money written on the inside of their lids. Players choose a box to knock an amount of money off the board. They then do a deal with the show’s banker. Maurice said the cash he won on the show had come in useful as his wife had just been made redundant.

He said: “I went in there aiming to pay the mortgage so £18,000 was the target. Now our house is ours so we don’t need to worry about that.”