RCSLT - Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

World Voice Day personal stories: RCSLT President Nick Hewer meets Margaret and Jono, two remarkable people with voice difficulties

• The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists • Season 7 • Episode 5

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World Voice Day podcast notes 

For World Voice Day 2026 RCSLT President Nick Hewer met with two people with voice difficulties, Margaret Stoddart and Jono Organ. They chat about their voice conditions, the difficulties they have faced, how speech and language therapy has supported them and what life is like now.  

About the speakers:

Margaret 

Elvis Presley fan, registered nurse and grandmother of six, Margaret Stoddart works as cath lab coordinator in the Cardiology department of Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. For the past six years she’s experienced a voice disorder called Muscle Tension Dysphonia and Spasmodic Dysphonia. 
 
Margaret is area contact leader for Dysphonia International, an organisation  dedicated to improving the lives of people affected by spasmodic dysphonia and related voice conditions through research, education, awareness, and support. She also hosts her own podcast ‘My Voice, My Way.' 

Jono 

Jono Organ is married with four children and 11 grandchildren, a self-employed health and safety consultant and trainer, working in the construction industry. He used to enjoy cycling and running before being diagnosed with head and neck cancer. Since his laryngectomy operation in 2023, he’s shifted his focus to awareness raising.  

Jono is a governor for the Royal Marsden hospital and sits on panels there, as well as at Great Ormond street Hospital. He is an ambassador to The Throat cancer foundation and also Oracle head and neck UK. In January this year he also set up a laryngectomy support group charity, ‘Life After Lary’. 

Nick Hewer: 

Nick Hewer, former presenter of iconic television programme Countdown, holds the role of RCSLT President. He is passionate about raising awareness of communication and swallowing difficulties, and helps to promote the message of the RCSLT to the general public. His ongoing work with the RCSLT has earned him an honorary degree from Plymouth Marjon University. 

Nick is also a published author, and he has previously worked as a public relations consultant and as Lord Sugar’s right-hand-man on The Apprentice. He is also patron for several charities, including Fairtrade, Hope and Homes for Children, Pancreatic Cancer Action and Street Child Sierra Leone. 

Useful links: 

Please be aware that the views expressed are those of the guests and not the RCSLT.




 Transcript Name:   

World Voice Day personal stories: RCSLT President Nick Hewer meets Margaret and Jono, two remarkable people with voice difficulties


 Transcript Date:   19 March 2026 

 

Speaker Key:  

HOST: NICK HEWER 

MARGARET: MARGARET STODDART 

JONO: JONO ORGAN 

 

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:00:00-0:00:08  

 

HOST: 0:00:08 Well, hello, and welcome. I’m Nick Hewer, President of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, and today’s podcast is released to mark World Voice Day. Before we begin, it’s worth saying a little about what speech and language therapists actually do, because the name doesn’t always tell the full story.  

 

Speech and language therapists work with people at all stages of life. They help them to communicate and to eat, drink and swallow. They work in neonatal units, supporting babies to feed, they help children to develop their speech, language and communication skills so that they can understand what’s being said to them, make friends and learn. They also work with adults, including those with learning disabilities and mental health challenges in many different environments such as hospitals, schools, youth offending institutions, care homes and beyond. 

 

Today, we’ll be exploring how they play a vital role in rehabilitating people, giving them confidence and enabling them to reconnect with everyday life. I am very pleased to be able to introduce you to two remarkable people, both of whom experience voice difficulties and who are incredible advocates for just how lifechanging speech and language therapy can be. 

 

Now, Margaret, you’re here, and Jono too, thank you so much for joining me. Could I ask each of you to introduce yourselves properly? 

 

JONO: 0:01:45 Hiya. Yeah, I’m Jono, I’m a 59-year-old with four children grown up and 11 grandchildren. My working life, I was a consultant in risk management in equity and diversity, and I’m now a charity CEO and chair, amongst many other roles. 

 

HOST: 0:02:09 Eleven grandchildren? 

 

JONO: 0:02:10 Yeah. 

 

HOST: 0:02:10 Lucky chap. Now, Margaret, what about you? 

 

MARGARET: 0:02:12 Hi, yes, my name’s Margaret. I work full-time as a nurse at Blackpool Victoria Hospital. I have two daughters and I have six grandchildren. I also host my own podcast called My Voice, My Way, and I advocate for people with voice difficulties by using my lived experience of voice disorders to raise awareness and support others. 

 

HOST: 0:02:40 So you’re at home here in the studio, good. Let’s go back to the beginning, before voice even enter the picture something significant happened medically for both of you. Margaret. 

 

MARGARET: 0:02:54 My journey into speech and language therapy actually began when my voice started to break down around 2018. What initially seemed like repeated laryngitis gradually became something much more serious and speech and language therapy ultimately became a central part of helping me understand and manage and live with my condition. At that point, before that, I was mainly trying to get on with life and work. When my voice first started to change my priority was figuring out what was wrong and whether it was something temporary. But at that stage, my biggest worry was not being believed and not knowing whether what I was experiencing was real or serious. 

 

HOST: 0:03:52 Jono, at that point, what were your main worries or concern? Tell us about that. 

 

JONO: 0:03:57 Yeah, well, very briefly, in January 2022 I was having some breathing difficulties that I went to the doctor with and then very quickly after that my voice ended up being a whisper, very husky, that the GP after over 11 months put down to a asthma inhaler that they provided when I had in fact stage four cancer of the larynx and the voice box. I understand what you’re saying, Margaret, about not being believed. I wasn’t believed or listened to for 11 months which meant 12 hours of surgery and many weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy to remove everything in my throat. 

 

HOST: 0:04:43 You realised pretty quickly that this was going to affect your day-to-day life quite radically, I guess? 

 

JONO: 0:04:51 Yeah, because I’m running my own business, I was a speaker, a public speaker and a teacher, educator and my voice was getting smaller and smaller and it was just a very quiet whisper in the end. It was a stage where we were out having a meal with friends and a friend of mine said, blimey, you aren’t half hard work and how no-one can hear you. 

 

HOST: 0:05:14 Of course, the thing is, Jono, that your voice was the most important thing in that life that you had beforehand as a teacher and a speaker. 

 

JONO: 0:05:23 Yeah, I was a public speaker and I went round schools and universities and workplaces. But like Margaret was saying, you were a singer, weren’t you? 

 

MARGARET: 0:05:31 Yeah, I was in operatic societies and for actually about 20 years or so I was a top soprano and my main thing with me was once my voice went, I cannot sing a note now. It’s really, really emotional for me to talk about that because I love to sing and I just can’t sing anymore. 

 

HOST: 0:05:57 So sad, so here we have two people whose voice was critical to their happiness and indeed their employment too, and suddenly you’re in trouble. 

 

MARGARET: 0:06:07 Yeah, exactly. 

 

HOST: 0:06:09 How did you get to see a speech and language therapist and once you had a diagnosis or once things became clearer medically did you know what a speech and language therapist was or that they would be part of your care? 

 

JONO: 0:06:25 Do you know, when I had surgery I never even heard of speech and language therapy, I didn’t even know they existed. I had no clue what they did or who they were. I mean, what I will say about speech and language therapy and I’m sure we’ll touch on it later, at the St George’s Hospital in London where I was treated, Jess, Katie, Rosie, amazing people, speech and language. They really do give you your life back because I did not have a voice, I had my voice box removed. Yeah, amazing what they do. 

 

MARGARET: 0:07:01 Yeah, they are. Being a nurse obviously, I was aware of speech and language therapy but where I worked in critical care the speech and language therapists that would come there would be there to help our patients with swallowing and things like that so I hadn’t really associated with my particular voice condition. But it did take me four to five years to get a definitive diagnosis for my condition, yeah. 

 

HOST: 0:07:34 People simply don’t get what speech and language therapists are capable of. Can you describe, Jono, what those sessions, what those first sessions were really like, both practically and emotionally? 

 

JONO: 0:07:49 Yeah, very, very emotionally difficult. When they remove your voice box and your voice they remove who you are, totally take it away from you. I had no ability to swallow or voice or anything for about 10 or 11 days and then when I had radiotherapy, I lost my voice again for 6, 7 weeks. After ten days, they come to your bedside and they introduce you into trying to make sounds in my new speech valve and exercises of saying, me, ah, me, and we worked through that.  

 

What I will say, Nick, Margaret, is that every day for 37 years I told my wife I loved her and for those 10, 11 days I was unable to voice. When speech and language said to me about day 12, right, we want you to speak now, we want you to say something and try, now get the air up from your diaphragm, prepare it in your chest and speak. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, my wife was by my bed and my family and I turned to my wife and I said, I love you. I was over the moon I had a voice back. 

 

HOST: 0:09:07 That’s a wonderful story. 

 

MARGARET: 0:09:08 That’s a wonderful story, isn’t it? 

 

HOST: 0:09:09 Margaret, how about you? 

 

MARGARET: 0:09:12 Therapy for me wasn’t just the exercises, which were great, my problem is I have a tendency to lock my abdominal muscles so that when I’m trying to speak, I would have to take a big deep breath to get out as much as I possibly could because I knew at the end of it I was going to lose my vocal stamina. The speech and language therapy exercises that they gave me were great to help me to try and release the locking of the stomach.  

 

But also, it was not just that, it was also about being supported emotionally through a very difficult process. The exercises that they would give me, just for instance, for the layperson out there, I would do things like mmm sound, and that you can feel in your lips. Then I would do a mmm-nnn, you feel that around your nose and nngg, and you can feel that in your temple in your forehead. They were amazing, and the eee and ooo. They were amazing. But, as I say, it was the support that I got from them as well which was absolutely incredible. It was validating and collaborative and much more holistic than people often imagined. 

 

HOST: 0:10:46 It wasn’t long then, I guess a question to both of you, when arrived a point where you noticed a shift, either physically, emotionally, on how you felt about yourself? Was it quick? How long did it take? 

 

MARGARET: 0:11:02 It did take me a while to get the proper speech and language therapy treatment that I needed. It took me from 2018 to 2022 before I actually had the correct people to speak to. It was a long journey and it’s still ongoing. I’ve been with Wythenshawe Hospital where the specialist voice clinic is since 2022 and I still see them even now, not as much as I did. It didn’t fix everything but they gave me tools and strategies and the understanding that allowed me to stay in work. 

 

JONO: 0:11:51 Yeah, for me, I’ve been a laryngectomy for three years and I’m still coming to terms with it. I had a lot of mental and psychological help and support. Speech and language, as I say, the team, Jess and that, they’ve been with me, are now part of the family, they will be with me for life, I will seem them, and I’m seeing them again tomorrow, and exercises and the support will always be there. As I said earlier, Nick, Margaret, and Margaret will understand, when you take someone’s voice, just try and think about it, you take who they are. You take their laugh, I have no ability to laugh anymore, so, yeah, the living daily mental treatment.  

 

Listen, I sound like a robot, when I speak to my wife in Sainsbury’s and saying, oh, Nicky, don’t forget, everyone in the aisle turns and stares so you have to try and overcome that. I did get a t-shirt made up and it said, not dead yet, you know, I try and turn it into humour, but, yeah, it is a very difficult journey as, Margaret, I’m sure you know. 

 

HOST: 0:13:01 How do voice difficulties continue to affect you today? How are you managing? Jono, you’re managing pretty well. 

 

JONO: 0:13:09 Yeah, I’m doing alright. I mean, we had a meeting the other day and my voice seized up there and I had to leave and that happens and it happens constantly all the time. Nick, you speak and you just speak and you don’t even think about it, I have to project air from my diaphragm, every word is thought about. How much am I going to get out in a breath? How long will my lungs hold and my diaphragm? How long with that work for me? I will always have speech difficulties. As I age and my lungs weaken the voice will go and I’ll have to use something else. 

 

HOST: 0:13:53 In a way, you wish that you could speak more frequently, interrupt conversations, call for something, you have to consider what you’re about to say before you say it. 

 

JONO: 0:14:04 Yes. 

 

HOST: 0:14:04 Therefore, you speak less than you would like to, is that true? 

 

JONO: 0:14:07 Nick, you’ve hit the nail on the head because sometimes you think, oh, I’ll say that, but it’s going to take me a lot of energy, so you don’t bother. Do you know something else as well, I have to press a button my neck that allows me to speak and my wife always wants to ask me questions when I’m washing up. Now, when my hands are wet, there’s a hole behind here directly to my lungs, it’s an open hole and if I’ve got wet hands I can’t press my button. 

 

HOST: 0:14:36 It’s a great excuse to not have to do the washing up. 

 

JONO: 0:14:39 It’s a great excuse not to have to do anything, Nick. 

 

HOST: 0:14:44 What about Margaret? 

 

MARGARET: 0:14:45 I mean, voice difficulties still affect me, especially when I’m tired or under pressure. Yesterday after we’d walked around London and I’d done a lot of talking with my family by last night I was extremely tired and started to get more breathless. But things like phone calls can still take a lot of effort. Now, before I was having my treatment, there was a time when I needed to speak to my bank and I phoned them. Of course, they couldn’t hear me so I actually got my daughter to ring for me and they wouldn’t speak to her because she wasn’t the account holder. 

 

HOST: 0:15:33 I get that. Listen, we all have problem with the bank, I can tell you that. But actually, you’re acting as a cardiac nurse I think, isn’t it? 

 

MARGARET: 0:15:42 Yes, cardiac. 

 

HOST: 0:15:43 You’re seeing patients and you’re dealing with a lot of phone calls and scheduling and all the rest of it. 

 

MARGARET: 0:15:49 Well, at work, I’m the coordinator in the cath lab, so I run five labs on a daily basis which is extremely busy as you can imagine. I spend all day talking to consultants and wards and patients and staff so at the end of the day I do get extremely tired. But my boss, they’re amazing there, and they’ll say, save your voice, I’ll do it for you. They’ll take the phone off me for half an hour or so so I can give it a rest. 

 

HOST: 0:16:20 Let’s take it from one to ten, I think you’re a ten now. 

 

MARGARET: 0:16:25 I think I’m a ten now too. 

 

HOST: 0:16:27 Where were you before the treatment? 

 

MARGARET: 0:16:29 One to two. 

 

HOST: 0:16:30 Is that right? 

 

MARGARET: 0:16:31 Yeah, absolutely. 

 

HOST: 0:16:32 It’s been dramatic. 

 

MARGARET: 0:16:32 It has been, yes. 

 

HOST: 0:16:33 Enables you to carry on with your life. 

 

MARGARET: 0:16:35 Yes, absolutely. I can still work full-time, I can still do my job which is incredibly stressful, but, yes, I can still do that now. Whereas, before I had all of this treatment I was getting to the point where I thought I was going to have to give up. 

 

HOST: 0:16:53 Your career was over? 

 

MARGARET: 0:16:55 Yeah. 

 

HOST: 0:16:55 That’s terrible. Jon, do you feel people respond to you differently now than they did before your operation? 

 

JONO: 0:17:02 Yeah, very much so, very, very much so. I understand what Margaret was saying there, I’m speaking today and my voice may be gone tomorrow. If I’m trying to plan for something, like even this today, no-one will know if I’ll be able to voice until I’m on that day. We live in a world that is not geared up for people that are mute. I’ve had to sign over all my financial dealings and all my health dealings to my wife as Power of Attorney because if I was rushed into hospital this afternoon and I couldn’t voice she will have to give them my wishes for me. It’s the same as anything, I phoned up a company yesterday to buy some badges and she said to me, oh, you’ve got a terrible line, we can’t deal with you, and put the phone down. That is how people deal with you.  

 

MARGARET: 0:17:52 Yeah. 

 

JONO: 0:17:52 I mean, I used to love to stand at the bar, Nick, never been a big drinker, but I used to love to stand at the bar, tell a few jokes. I’ve lost so many friends, no-one can hear me at the bar, I can’t go to the bar to order a round of drinks. If I’m in a cafeteria and I order some food or a coffee, they say, pardon? What did you say? It does get very frustrating and it is very difficult to make sure you go out every day and face the world because many patients with laryngectomy never leave the home again. 

 

HOST: 0:18:28 We don’t live in a gracious world I’m afraid, do we? 

 

MARGARET: 0:18:32 Yeah. 

 

HOST: 0:18:32 Do you miss your old voice? Do you remember your old voice? Do you miss it? 

 

JONO: 0:18:37 For 11 months before I got this voice I spoke with a whisper. The voice I had before then I do miss it and mentally it’s so very difficult. The children, they don’t do it now, but they’d said, oh, look, dad, I found this video, and it’ll be me speaking on it two or three years ago. I’d say, I don’t want to listen, don’t show me that anymore. 

 

HOST: 0:19:01 Oh really, that’s interesting. 

 

JONO: 0:19:03 Do you know what, Nick, and it’s like cancer, not just the voice, there’s life before cancer and there’s live after cancer. I’m in palliative care now with stage four cancer and my life changed the day I was diagnosed and it wasn’t just the voice.  

 

HOST: 0:19:20 No, so loss of identity really, isn’t it? 

 

JONO: 0:19:24 Yeah, very much so, it’s exactly what it is. If you remove the voice, and Margaret will back me up on this, you remove the person from the room. 

 

MARGARET: 0:19:32 Yes. 

 

HOST: 0:19:33 Margaret, do you miss your old voice? 

 

MARGARET: 0:19:36 I do miss my old voice, yes. There’s been a real sense of loss and identify shift. This affected my confidence and wellbeing. I was in amateur operatic societies for over 20 years as a top soprano and I used to love being on stage, I absolutely loved it. But now I can’t sing a note and it makes me very emotional to even talk about the fact that I’ve lost my singing voice now. 

 

JONO: 0:20:11 I’m CEO of a charity, Life After Lary, which is a charity for laryngectomies. I chair Genomic Medicine for Great Ormond Street, I’m a Governor for Royal Marsden Hospital and I sit on their biomedical research panels, you have to keep pushing your limitations as best you can. I’ve always said it, and I say this on every speech and presentation I do, surgeons take away your cancer, speech and language therapy give you your life back.  

 

HOST: 0:20:46 Looking back, these really hard experiences you’ve had to endure, have opened up new opportunities or perspectives. What are you most proud of achieving since your voice changed? 

 

MARGARET: 0:21:00 I am most proud of the fact that I now have a voice again and the experiences that I’ve had have opened up new opportunities for me. This started when I was having problems, I was sat at home one day and I thought, I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to start a support group. Then I thought, well, perhaps I should look out there and see what else there is out there first before I do that. By doing that, I actually found Dysphonia International, which is an American company, but they are worldwide. I am now an area contact leader for them and I advocate for people with voice disorders.  

 

I then started my own podcast and I’m so happy to be able to say that I’ve now done 19 podcasts, I’ve interviewed many different people. I had Declan Costello on, who’s absolutely amazing. I’ve interviewed a psychologist about voice disorders, another lady who deals with child voice disorders. My own surgeon and consultant at Manchester Royal, I interviewed her. I even interviewed an actor and director and we talked about the difficulties not only of people being able to act and get jobs out there but also the difficulties for people with a voice disorder. 

 

HOST: 0:22:44 We need young people searching for a good career to think about speech and language therapy because it’s a wonderful career and we need more. 

 

MARGARET: 0:22:54 Speech and language therapy is an amazing career for people to go into. I now give talks to speech and language therapy students at a local university and I just tell them all about my own lived experience. I’ve even shown them the videos of my own scopes that my consultant has done and they find that so amazing. The feedback that I’ve had from the students has been incredible. Speech and language therapy, amazing, if you want to do it, I would do it. I’m proud that I’ve been able to turn something very difficult into something meaningful and to show that even when your voice changes it can still be powerful. 

 

JONO: 0:23:44 When my voice changed, I sat on my hospital bed at 2 o’clock in the morning with a nurse and I was crying my eyes out. I’d never felt so alone. I was writing things down on a piece of paper with no voice, no future, and I remember writing down, I feel so alone and so scared, no-one in the world should feel like this. She said to me, well, do something about it then, make sure no-one does feel like this. What I did was I started a charity for laryngectomy patients with the ethos that no Lary will ever be alone. Last year we helped over 2,000 families with care packs and hospital packs and meetings. We was on a Zoom meeting last night with a lot of patients and family. What I’m most proud of is that we have achieved so much for this charity and it’s helping so many people, not just in the UK but around the world. 

 

HOST: 0:24:55 For anyone listening who’s worried about their own voices or about someone they care about, what’s the one piece of advice you’d want them to hear? Margaret, what do you think? 

 

MARGARET: 0:25:07 Well, my main advice is simple. Speak to your doctor. As soon as you have a voice disorder, a condition. Even if you think you’ve just got a bad cold, it feels a bit sore, hoarse or raspy, which mine was, if you’re worried about your voice just don’t ignore it. Don’t sit in silence. I always end my podcasts with, don’t sit in silence, if you have a problem with your voice, get help. Ask your GP for a referral to a ear, nose and throat specialist and take it from there. 

 

JONO: 0:25:48 Yeah, be your own advocate. What I should have done when I walked into my doctor’s surgery 11 months prior to seeing ENT with them breathing difficulties and they said, oh, you’ve got asthma, there’s an inhaler, and I went back with a hoarse voice and they said, oh, that’s because of the inhaler. I should have asked for a second opinion and I should have stamped my feet. Demand more of your doctor, we are our own advocates and we have a voice. I haven’t got years and years ahead of me, that’s a fact, maybe two, so in those short time now I want to reach as many people as we can and hold as many hands as we can. Then that way some good will have come out of me losing my voice. 

 

HOST: 0:26:39 We need young people searching for a good career to think about speech and language therapy because it’s a wonderful career and we need more. To close, I’d just like to say thank you, Margaret, and Jono too, your openness and generosity will resonate with many people listening today so for that we’re very grateful to you both.  

 

On World Voice Day the message is very simple. Our voices matter, you’ve just heard why, and when something changes help is available. Speech and language therapists play a vital role in supporting people to communicate, connect and live well. If you’re concerned about your voice don’t ignore it. Speak to your doctor, ask questions and seek support early. For anyone listening who is considering a career in speech and language therapy I genuinely couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Speech and language therapists make an extraordinary difference to people’s lives, often at their most vulnerable moments as Margaret and Jono have shown. Thank you both and thank you all for listening. 

 

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:27:50-0:28:05 

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