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A man from Waterford is experiencing a true renaissance after inserting a cotton swab so far into his ear that he managed to reset himself to factory settings. Now, the 28-year-old is having to relearn basic skills such as speaking, walking and eating independently with experts left confounded by the mystery.

Since Simon Mannigan is currently very busy putting plastic shapes into the right holes on top of the container, his wife Stephanie (29) talked to us about the fateful accident.

“He really just wanted to clean his ears – he does it all the time, even though I am always telling him you’re not supposed to use cotton buds for that. However, this time he suddenly broke down and started babbling incoherently. I hadn’t a clue what was wrong with him.”

The mystery could only be solved by an expert team consisting of doctors and psychologists and a call placed to Eir’s helpdesk. “It seems that the patient hit a trigger point towards the end the ear canal. This point was previously unknown to science, but he must have pressed it for approximately ten seconds to reset set all his motor and cognitive skills back to factory settings”, explains Michael Grogan, the neurologist leading the team. “So now he is basically a new-born baby.”

Grogan believes there is no real hope of a speedy recovery. “Our initial attempts at treatments using approaches like electrotherapy and hypnotherapy have not yet been successful. It appears that Sebastian has not backed up his data at all since birth and thus will unfortunately have to learn everything again from scratch.” It is expected that it will take around 20 years for the patient to return to being his old self.

Simon even has to relearn how to eat:

Stephanie, however, refuses to be discouraged by her husband’s diagnosis. Instead, she is focusing on the positives.

“Well, you know, I have always wanted children. And who would not leap at the opportunity to re-educate their partner according to their own wishes?” Suddenly, there is an unpleasant smell. “Oh, would you excuse me now? I need to change Simon’s nappy.”