Oxford News
90s music legend ‘struggling’ as chronic condition revealed
That’s exactly the cost to Groove Armada’s Andy Cato and Tom Findlay, the electronic music duo who achieved massive success with dance hits including Superstylin’ and I See You Baby.
Although 30 years of subjecting their ears to extremely loud music has damaged both men’s hearing, they’re re still regularly performing DJ sets at gigs and festivals throughout the UK and internationally to thousands of new and old fans.
But the difference these days is that their hearing is protected during the gigs, and while Findlay, 53, now wears hearing aids to bolster his damaged hearing,
Cato, also 53 and operates a farm on the Oxfordshire-Wiltshire border, has to endure the incessant ringing in the ears caused by tinnitus.
Findlay says: “I knew I had chronic hearing loss – I was often having to ask people to repeat stuff, and almost tuning out of conversations, particularly in environments where there was a lot of background noise or reverberation. I was really struggling to pick things up.
“I’ve probably been struggling with problematic hearing loss since my late 30s to early 40s. So I knew it was there, and I was slightly in denial.”
But he eventually had a hearing test about 18 months ago, and has been wearing hearing aids when necessary since then.
“Wearing hearing aids seems like something people feel a bit of stigma about, and it’d be good to take that out of it because it’s been transformative for me.” he admits.
But why does he think there’s so much stigma around wearing hearing aids?
“It’s associated with ageing, and we’re all a bit uncomfortable about that,” he observes. “It’s about a sense of frailty – there’s some discomfort about that in a way that’s quite different from the way we feel about glasses.
“Glasses can be a sexy accessory, can’t they? But hearing aids definitely aren’t.
“We’re all wearing earpods now most of the time, so they just look like that. And while I used to put off social situations where I knew I’d struggle, I don’t do that any more, and that’s great – it gives you a lot more confidence.”
It’s a slightly different story for Cato and his tinnitus, and he says: “I think you have to live with it, so the ideal thing would be to stop it in the first place.”
He explains that when they’re DJing, he and Findlay stand between two huge sets of speakers that are separate to the main speakers in the club or on the festival stage.
In the early days of their career, he recalls: “We’d come out of clubs and it would be funny that we could stand outside the door and not be able to hear each other.”
Findlay says in those days they gave no thought to any damage the excessive noise may have been doing to their hearing. But eventually they started wearing in-ear monitors, and then hearing protection.
“Now, when we DJ, we both wear hearing protection, which is essentially filtering out the real low-end frequencies which do a lot of the damage that don’t necessarily add to your experience massively,” he says.
“You just don’t get that real thudding stuff, and that means when we’ve done a gig, we don’t leave with our ears ringing.”
“I do!” interjects Cato, referring to the ringing of his tinnitus.
“Well, Andy does,” says Findlay with a chuckle. “I don’t.
“So we’re doing some damage, but a lot less damage than we would have done before. If we’re going to prolong our careers, protecting our hearing is going to be a necessity for us.”
The pair are hoping to help start more discussions about hearing loss, protecting hearing and reducing the stigma of wearing hearing aids, and they’ve teamed up with Specsavers to encourage over-50s to take a quick online hearing test which will give them the chance to get on ‘The Testlist’ to secure tickets for exclusive music events. Groove Armada will headline the inaugural Testlist event at London’s Phonox on October 15.
The duo, who formed Groove Armada in 1996, are squeezing the performance in among upcoming tour dates in the UK, Spain, Ibiza and the US, and Cato says: “We’ve got an incredibly busy summer yet again – it’s an amazing privilege to be still doing this 30 years later.”
And although many of their original fans are from the Nineties rave generation, younger people are also loving their music – Cato says the average age of their last gig was about 20.
“It was absolutely wild energy – amazing,” he says. “We’re playing music made last week, and it still feels really vibey.”
But despite such a packed touring schedule, both men have secondary careers too. Cato owns a farm in France and rents a National Trust farm in Oxfordshire, using regenerative farming methods, and he’s the co-founder of Wildfarmed, a sustainable food and farming business.
It is a 729-acre National trust plot on the Buscot and Coleshill estate.
“It’s very, very full on,” he says. “The nub of it is that we farm in a way which can make us far more resilient to droughts and floods, and that will massively help nature recovery.”
The farming focuses on wheat, oats and barley, and Cato says: “I’ve definitely got a pretty endless supply of excellent bread, and I’ve got a little veg patch in the garden of the farm – although it’s getting a bit neglected.
“When you combine our gig and harvest schedule with drought, it gets a little bit tricky to keep those leaves going.”
Findlay has also found his own “side hustle” has had to take more of a back seat because Groove Armada is still so popular. After an extended period of depression around 2010, he had cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which helped him so much he decided to become a therapist himself.
“Probably for a lot of it [the depression] I didn’t even know that’s what I was experiencing because I don’t think we were having the conversations openly around mental health at that time that we are, thankfully, now.”
He worked in the NHS as a counsellor, and then at King’s College London, but he’s just decided to leave there, and explains: “I partly trained because I thought all these gigs were going to come to an end and I thought I needed a side hustle, but the gigs have been better than ever and people keep coming. So I’m going to carry on counselling but in a voluntary capacity.
“It’s quite hard when you’re trying to combine that with making tunes and gigs. I just never felt like I had any downtime. But I’ve loved doing it – it’s an amazing thing to share experiences with people and help them make important changes in their life.”
And as well as loving being a therapist, Findlay says the training helped him personally too, explaining: “Now I occasionally get moments where I don’t feel great, but I’m able to self-correct and find ways of thinking and ways of behaving that are really helpful.”
For a chance of getting free tickets to Groove Armada’s set at London’s Phonox on October 15, take the over-50s online hearing screener and get your name on The Testlist by September 13.
On Wednesday, September 2, it was the Concours judging and private viewings to dominate the agenda for the day.
Twelve Concours classes were held across almost a century of motoring, including The Golden Age of Motoring, 100 Years of Carrrozzeria Touring, La Dolce Vita, 60 Years of the Lamborghini Miura and Passione Ferrari.
Two new classes also made their debut for 2026, Rare Breeds of the Digital Age and Hypercar Heaven, which recognise the growing importance of contemporary performance cars within the international collector market.
Judging will take place across Wednesday and Thursday, with the show field bringing together a 70-strong collection of classics, supercars and hypercars from around the world.
Some of the cars include Aa Maserati 8C 3000, Alfa Romeo Sprint Berlinetta, a one-off Maserati 3500GT Spyder Prototipo by Vignale, a very early Porsche 356 Split Window Coupé, Aston Martin DB3S, Lamborghini Miura P400S, Bizzarrini 5300GT, Ferrari 250 GT Series 1 Cabriolet, Bugatti EB110 Prototype, Aston Martin Valiant Prototype and the extraordinary Bugatti Bolide, one of just 40 produced worldwide.
Helen Pike has decided to step down as Master of Magdalen College School at the end of the 2026/27 academic year, the school in east Oxford announced in March.
MCS is one of the top performing schools in the country, ranking in the top 20 independent secondary schools in The Sunday Times Parent Power Schools Guide 2026.
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The new academic year will start next week, with Ms Pike preparing for one more year in charge before she hands over to her successor, who will take over in September 2027.
The first female Master at MCS, Ms Pike guided the board of governors to one of the most significant decisions in the school’s history, to become fully co-educational from 2027.
While there has been a co-educational sixth form at the school for 15 years, the school last month announced it will become fully co-educational over the coming decade.
Ms Pike said earlier: “I love MCS, and it is a perennial privilege to lead this remarkable school.
“Being Master of MCS is a brilliant job, and I am declaring my intention early in order to give MCS the very best opportunity to find the right Master for September 2027. I shall continue to do all in my power to further the fortunes of this wonderful school until then.
“I look forward to a new phase in my own professional life, one that builds on all that I have enjoyed and achieved in my career during the past 30 years.
“Having encouraged many cohorts of pupils to take sensible risks and to do something creative and different when the time feels right, I am doing just that.”
During Ms Pike’s tenure, MCS has been recognised as a Top 20 Independent School and South East School of the Year by the Sunday Times and won Independent School of the Year for Social Mobility.
Thanking her in his letter to the school community, chair of governors, Bob Price, said earlier this year: “Helen is an outstanding leader and will go with our sincere gratitude and warm thanks for her exceptional headship.
“She will leave the school in excellent shape for her successor.”
Recruitment for a replacement for Ms Pike is now under way.
Last month, Ms Pike congratulated pupils on their “outstanding success” in this year’s A-Level exams, after more than a quarter of pupils (43) achieved three A*s or more and 25 secured all A*s.
In total, 39 pupils from the 2026 cohort are heading to Oxbridge, while 22 have secured places to study medicine.
As part of the school’s expansion plans, MCS is preparing to build a new Science, Library and Partnerships building.
A spokeswoman said the new building will offer an exciting opportunity to reimagine the senior school site as staff look ahead to full co-education.
She added earlier: “With a vision to create a sector-leading science building in the centre of Oxford, the development will enable us to support an ambitious and forward-looking science curriculum, expanding to the emerging and rapidly advancing areas of robotics, AI and Big Data.”
Holding banners which read ‘For f**k’s sake, just stop oil’, the demonstrators took to the road in Parliament Square at noon today (Wednesday, September 2).
This was as Andy Burnham faced his first Prime Minister’s Questions, and many of the protestors glued themselves to the road.
The group demanded that the UK government stop approving all further oil and gas developments, and sign a Fossil Fuel Treaty to stop oil and gas extraction.
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Just Stop Oil say that the police are expected to arrest all those blocking the road, and that one lane has been left free of glued-on action takers to permit access for emergency vehicles.
Andy Burnham is due to make a decision on whether to allow more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.
Reverend James Crote, a Baptist Minister and grandfather from Chesterton near Bicester, said: “Today is my grandson’s first birthday. I have to take action for the sake of his future.
The 69-year-old added: “The government has been dilly-dallying about whether to say yes or no to the Rosebank oil field but, if we want a future for our children, there is no choice – it has to say ‘no’.
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“I am here as a Christian Minister because the Church has to speak out and demand that the government stops approving further oil and gas developments now. It’s time for us all to say ‘For God’s sake, Just Stop Oil’.”
Data from the Met Office indicates that 2026 was the hottest summer in UK recorded history, beating 2025, which was the previous hottest summer on record.
2026 was also one of the driest summers on record, delivering record-low food harvests.
Climbing temperatures have triggered wildfires across the country, and national fire chiefs said the wildfire risk facing the UK is “like nothing we have seen before”.
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Taking action, grandmother Victoria Ann Lynch-Staunton from Leamington Spa, said: “What is happening is beyond a tragedy.”
The 71-year-old added: “I beg everyone to join Just Stop Oil or governments will continue to prioritise endless growth and corporate profit over billions of lives – yours and your children.
“Wake up and smell the coffin. It is the responsibility of all of us to act now!”
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said today: “We are all Just Stop Oil.
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“Every single person who fears deadly wildfires, devastating droughts, and spiralling food shortages is Just Stop Oil.
“The first duty of government is to keep the public safe – but by greenlighting oil and gas drilling, they endanger our survival while corporates and billionaires laugh their way to the bank.
“Every one of us feels alone and powerless in the face of this insanity, but we know there is massive political and public support for our demand.
“So we’re inviting everyone to join us at an online call on 3rd October 2026 – because it’s when we work together that we are powerful and win.”
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