Man with rare condition can taste, smell and feel names - and it's bad news if you're called Kirsty

Henry Gray, 23, has always been able to taste, smell or have a feeling associated with words for as long as he can remember.

He discovered he had lexical-gustatory synaesthesia in 2009 – after his parents and teachers picked up on him commenting on the tastes for his classmate's names.

Synaesthesia is a neurological condition that results in the joining or merging of senses that aren't normally connected – those affected can often taste or smell when hearing, speaking, reading or thinking about words.

For Henry the name Boris Johnson tastes like ‘squishing a hard-shelled beetle with his foot’ and Harry Styles is like ‘hair sticking up like telephone wires'.

He also says Donald Trump is like a 'deflating rubber duck'.

Despite his condition, Henry insists that most of the time the feelings are background noise but would struggle to date or be close friends with someone with a name he really disliked.

Henry, a barman, from Newcastle, said: “I've always associated words and names with tastes, smells and feelings - it's all I've ever known.

"To me, Kate Middleton is vaguely like jaggedly cutting cloth with a knife in a church and I can hear it.

“Cameron Diaz is like a sparkly disco ball slowly rotating and Jennifer Lawrence is like sniffing the inside of a shoe.