Del Amitri rocker Justin Currie opens up on Parkinson's battle and nickname he has given brutal disease

Scottish rock star Justin Currie has told how he is battling Parkinson’s disease - and he has nicknamed the illness Gavin.The Del Amitri frontman, 59, has been secretly living with the condition after being diagnosed in 2022.He says he first realised something was wrong when he found himself unable to hold a plectrum while playing guitar.Currie visited a neurologist at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital where he received an unofficial diagnosis almost immediately.

After he was instructed to relax his arms then raise his arms above his head, the neurologist identified a trembling hand as a potential indicator of Parkinson’s, but it would be 12 months before the diagnosis was confirmed, leading to what the singer describes as “a year of dread and hope”.He said: “Twelve months later, I sail out of the same clinic secure in the knowledge that I’m ill and emboldened by the pleasant surprise that they have pills for this sort of thing.“I decide that I’m going to keep working, keep touring and keep playing, despite the uneasy feeling that another man is growing inside me, slowly seizing the means of control.“It’s definitely a fight to figure out who is in control. “You do think ‘who is in charge here?’ When you start losing control of something, even in a mild way, you feel and fear the encroachment of that thing inside you that is taking you over.

That’s what it feels like – a shadow inside you that is slowly but surely taking you over.”He added: “The shake in my hand I call Gavin, a traitor who comes and goes and betrays any surge of adrenalin, any passing thought, like a shadow who suddenly appears as a mocking fool parodying emotions, putting secret desires on public display.“Gavin every now and then appears...