Boxing champion Ricky Hatton thought his sight was failing due to age – in fact his eyeball was out of shape

As four-time boxing world champion Ricky Hatton squinted and held his phone nearer to the light, all he could see was a frustrating blur.

Somewhere on the screen were the vital details of an important boxing deal Ricky was in the middle of negotiating on behalf of his son and fellow pugilist Campbell, 23.

Unable to locate his glasses, he had ­little choice but to ask a passer-by to read out the crucial message to him.

‘The minute I hit 40, my eyesight started going and every year since it’s got worse,’ says Ricky, who is 45 and lives alone in Manchester.

‘It was seriously hampering my life – one of the things I enjoy most is giving motivational and after-dinner speeches.

‘But I lived in fear of standing before a room of people, needing to glance at my notes – and finding I didn’t have my reading glasses on me.’

Compared with his well-chronicled struggles with poor mental health and addiction to alcohol and drugs, fading eyesight might not seem like that big an opponent for a man who was known as ‘The Hitman’ during his boxing career.

But the father of three –  he also has two daughters aged 11 and ten from his former fiancée Jennifer Dooley – insists it has at times ­seriously hindered him in his new role as a boxing promoter and trainer.

‘I am constantly on the move and on my phone dealing with work arrangements,’ he says.  ‘All my messages and my calendar are on my phone. That includes details on where the lads I train are boxing, my after-dinner speaking engagements and my charity work.’ [Ricky is an ambassador for mental health].

While viewing distant objects was less of a problem, reading – especially small text on his phone – became so difficult that his friends called him Grandad.

‘I didn’t mind that because I am one [his son has a six-year-old daughter],’ says Ricky, who retired from professional boxing in 2012. ‘But I was quite worried that something serious was ­happening to my eyes.’

A visit to the optician revealed he had presbyopia (the age-related complaint that makes it difficult to see things up close due to a stiffening of the lens) and he was prescribed reading glasses.

But he kept losing them, so bought numerous off-the-shelf pairs that he kept dotted around the house.

‘Still, I could never find them when the phone rang and I needed to take notes,’ he says. ‘And the cheap ones I got from the rack in the local chemist’s weren’t brilliant – things were still a little blurry.’

Desperate for a solution, in ­February, Ricky consulted a private eye clinic, Optegra, in Manchester – here tests revealed that as well as presbyopia he had hyperopia, which causes difficulty focusing on close objects but isn’t connected to ageing.

Instead, the condition, which affects around 13 million Britons, is due to the eye being shorter than normal (from front to back), which disrupts the way it refracts (or bends) incoming light.

It was this together with the presbyopia that explained why Ricky’s sight was deteriorating so rapidly.

‘People like Ricky who are hyperopic tend to experience presbyopia much earlier in life,’ says Shafiq Rehman, a consultant ophthalmologist, who treated him at the Optegra clinic. ‘They’re fine in their teens, 20s and 30s, as the cornea [the clear bit at the front of the eye that focuses light on the back of the eye to form an image] has a lot of flexibility. But that declines with age.’

The effect of age-related long-sightedness (presbyopia) on someone who is already long-sighted (hyperopia) is, says Mr Rehman, a ‘double whammy’.

‘If your vision is good, you tend to get presbyopia in your late 40s, but with hyperopia, it’s pulled back into your early 40s,’ he says.

People with hyperopia often need to squint to see clearly, they may suffer from eye strain or headaches, and the condition can run in families.

However, it doesn’t necessarily get worse with age – in fact, children with hyperopia can grow out of it, as their eyes develop and become longer: this makes the cornea more curved, producing better-focused images.

Many with the condition go through life wearing spectacles that correct the problem.

These may be prescription reading glasses or, for those who also struggle to see things in the distance, varifocal lenses, which have one type of glass at the ­bottom to focus on nearby objects and a different one at the top for driving or zooming in on things far away.

Laser surgery – a popular ­treatment for short-sightedness (or myopia, an inability to see things in the distance) – is less suitable for those who can’t focus on things close up because of the shape of the eyeball.

Surgeons usually only perform it on mild cases of hyperopia. Even then, studies show, there is a good chance that vision will decline again within five years in up to half of all patients, says Mr Rehman.

He recommended Ricky have lens replacement surgery, where the natural lens is removed and a plastic prescription one inserted. It’s only available on the NHS for patients with cataracts (when the lens becomes clouded over) that are so severe their quality of life is being affected.

The idea is the artificial lens has the flexibility to focus on incoming light at the right point in the eye to produce a sharp image.

Before the procedure, a few drops of anaesthetic were put into each of Ricky’s eyes.

A series of tiny incisions were made in the cornea, before the natural lens was broken up and removed with a suction tube.

The capsule around the outside of the lens in both eyes – a bit like the skin of the grape – was kept intact so it could hold the new artificial lens in place.

After his operation (which cost almost £8,000 for both eyes) in April, Ricky rested for about half an hour before his agent Paul drove him home.

‘I didn’t even need him to stay the night,’ he recalls.

‘I thought I’d come out with patches over my eyes but I was able to watch the football on TV and there was absolutely no discomfort, just as there hadn’t been during the op. My eyes were just a little blurry and watery.

‘I’d been warned to take time off work and not to exert myself so my assistant coach stepped in.’

The next day, Ricky says, he was able to read the small text on his phone and his vision has gradually improved. ‘I’ve gone round the house picking up all my old reading glasses and put them in a drawer in case anyone else needs them, because I no longer do.’

In rare cases, says Mr Rehman, lens replacement patients may still need reading glasses.

‘Perhaps if they want to read War And Peace,’ he jokes – that is, large books printed in a small typeface. ‘But generally speaking their vision remains stable.’

But not all experts think that replacing the natural lens is appropriate for anything other than cataracts.

Professor David Garty, a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, who has carried out over 17,000 lens replacement operations on cataract patients, says he doesn’t agree with the procedure just to get rid of reading glasses.

‘Personally, I wouldn’t do it,’ he says. ‘It’s an invasive procedure and there are risks such as infection, though they are very low.

‘Cataract surgery is the most common operation worldwide and is ultra-safe, highly sophisticated and very predictable.

‘But when patients are having this operation for presbyopia, you’re doing surgery to a normal eye and that’s something you really need to think about.’

However, Professor Garty adds that, in cases where patients need glasses both for reading and long-distance vision (which Ricky was warned he would soon require due to his fast-deteriorating sight) there could be ‘benefits’ to the eye surgery.

Ricky – who is dating actress Claire Sweeney – says now that he ‘should have had it done sooner’.

‘Life has become so much more streamlined since I have. What was I doing messing about and worrying so much for the past couple of years?’