Make it stop: I do hope for some peace and quiet, says tinnitus sufferer Susan Root (Picture: East News)

They say the devil has all the best tunes – but if he was looking for a really bad one to inflict on sinners in hell, (How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window would have to be up there.

So pity poor Susan Root, who has been hearing the irritating 1950s ditty on a continuous loop for the past three years.

She has a rare form of tinnitus which makes the song she recalls from childhood play in her head, 24 hours a day.

‘They have given me a hearing aid they hoped would fix my hearing problems and therefore stop the music but it just hasn’t worked,’ she said.




‘I’ve come to accept that I’m probably going to be stuck with this hellish condition for the rest of my life.’ As a girl, Mrs Root, 63, loved Bob Merrill’s novelty song – a 1953 number one for Patti Page in the US and Lita Roza in Britain.

Now, she is so heartily sick of it she listens to whale music in an attempt to block it out.

‘There are times when my husband will be talking to me and I can’t hear what he is saying over the music,’ she said.

‘It can be very frustrating and it drives us both mad at times.’

The cleaner, of Coggeshall, Essex, is not alone in having lost all interest in that doggie’s price, and whether or not he might be for sale.

Jazz artist Roza – who died in 2008 – so hated the tune she refused ever to sing it again after reluctantly recording it.