Thousands of people suffering tinnitus, the hearing problem, at first believe that the infuriating sounds are coming from their noisy neighbours.

Tinnitus is usually described as ringing in the ears but the noise can sound like whistling, buzzing, humming and the thumping of loud music from next door.
A survey revealed that about 2,000 people a year go as far as complaining to councils about annoying external noise that turned out to be inside their heads.
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The Royal National Institute for the Deaf and the British Tinnitus Association, which conducted the survey, spoke to more than 1,000 tinnitus sufferers.

One in four said that when they first experienced the symptoms they did not realise the sounds were internal. Many thought the noise had come from the neighbours, traffic, the television or the refrigerator.

Nearly five million people in Britain are believed to suffer from tinnitus, for which there is no cure. Relief is offered through therapy to manage the sounds and devices to distract a person from it using, for example, bird song or the sea.