GRANDAD PRAISES MEDICS FOR NOSE SURGERY

I hadn't been able to properly kiss my wife for years...

- BILLY GADDI

A Renfrewshire granddad has thanked medics after an operation to reduce the size of his nose transformed his face.

Gerard McAliece, 68, had been suffering from one of the worst cases of Rhinophyma - a disfiguring condition in which the nose swells and grows - that his medical team had ever seen.

The tissue on his nose had expanded to such an extent that it was hanging down over his mouth and covering a large part of his face.

The Greenock-born granddad, who now stays in Kilmalcolm, first noticed his nose changing about six years ago and initially accepted it as “just another part of life”.

He said: “It just kept growing and growing and, as much as possible, I tried to ignore it.

“People began to stare and some would turn away. But my view was ‘this is me, take me as I am!