Are You Having a Laugh? TV and Disability

Back in the Dark Ages, disabled people were marginalised, patronised

and told to put a brave face on it.

'Charlie Coffey has been on his back for 58 years but he can still laugh.'

But in today's politically correct, playfully ironic world,

attitudes towards disability are very different.

How did you get up there?

I fell.

50 years ago, people with disabilities lived in a parallel universe of invalid carriages,

callipers and charity.

We weren't throwing stones at people in wheelchairs, but that sense of,

"He's not like me, we must give money."

You can't do that because you're in a wheelchair.

Since then, language has changed.

I started out as just plain blind. I became visually handicapped

and visually impaired, someone with a sight problem.

Humour has changed.

'It's the start of the 1500 metres for the deaf.'

STARTER PISTOL IS FIRED

Images of disability on TV have gone from this...

I want to be a baddie and point with my evil finger.

-..to this...

-It must be lovely to see her laughing.

-..via this.

-If you've never seen a severely handicapped person trying to speak, it can be a bit alarming.

Oh, over here! Over here, puppy! Oh!

"Get her off! She's frightening our children!"

But how did these changes happen?

It was nice to get the Sports Personality Award. It would've been nicer if I could have got on stage!

We've had box-ticking, positive discrimination and - the token wheelchair.

'For many disabled people, stairs present a painful ordeal,

'so the Central Council For The Care Of Cripples,

'who are pioneers in the use of equipment for the handicapped,

'have imported from Denmark a wheelchair that acts as an escalator.'

Society's attitude towards disability has changed, thankfully,

and not least on our TV screens.

There's been a revolution and perhaps the biggest change has been how we talk about the handicapped.

No, the differently abled.

You know, those with special needs. You know what I'm talking about!

-Why, what are you? A spazzy?

-No...

"Spaz", "spastic" we used to use all the time.

"Crip", "raspberry ripple", "spaz", "mong".

"Flid", "spastic", "mong", "spacker", "spaz", "spasmo".

It's all about the intention and the context.

For me, kind of "mong" is pretty nasty.

People who had Down's syndrome were referred to as "mongols".

Nobody was embarrassed by it because that was the word.

But now... God, it almost stuck in my throat to say it!

Girls at my school used to run up to me and go, "You're a spastic!"

And I doubt I would have felt much better, had they gone, "You're differently abled!"

I was the school flid, obviously.

Quite a luxury. There was only 400 of us. I guess my classmates were pleased they got a proper flid.

People would say to me, "So what's it like then?

"How do you manage being unsighted?"

And I'd go, "Unsighted? That makes me sound like a football referee!"

Will you... Yes, you...

..please help spastics?

If language has become more inclusive, so has society.

In the past, disabled people weren't integrated. They were different, other, out of sight, out of mind.

'Yes, please help spastics.'

Growing up in the '70s and early '80s, there was that feeling,

the little boy stood outside newsagent's,

the little sort of thing you could donate money to.

That was a big icon of the age. There was a sense of otherness, "That boy's not like me."

And often, it was a dreadful thing, people had shoved chips into the slot where the money should be

because that passed for recreation back in the '70s.

Disabilities of all sorts were other and somewhere else

and not quite of this world.

Disabled people were certainly a lot less visible then because of the way in which we were educated,

because you were much more likely to be institutionalised

as a disabled person in those days.

TV reflects society. Go back 40 years and one of the only representations

of disability on the small screen was set in a manky Midlands motel.

Crossroads character Sandy Richardson was Britain's most famous fictional wheelchair user.

Is it really as dire as it sounds?

Sandy, with the croaky voice,

was a bloke in a wheelchair who went from reception to the bar and back again. I watched it with my granny.

Crossroads Motel, can I help you?

My first memory, as I became a wheelchair user,

was watching Crossroads which was compulsory viewing in our house every teatime

and Sandy Richardson being the token wheelchair user, but it was all very patronising.

It felt tokenistic and it looked tokenistic

and it didn't bear any resemblance to my life and how I was treated.

Oh! Oh...

Tokenism - definitely something to be avoided then. Well, if I knew what it was.

If you parachute a disabled performer, character into a show

and all they get to talk about is their disability,

then that's tokenism, I think.

And that smacks of not necessarily being progress.

There was one super-cool wheelchair user out there in the '60s and '70s,

policing the strangely accessible streets of San Francisco -

Robert T Ironside.

Ironside, I remember, was very ahead of its time, actually -

somebody who wasn't a baddie, was in a wheelchair,

was very smart and was a detective, so it actually broke lots of moulds.

He never, ever lost a case, Ironside,

so, you know, book your lawyer in a wheelchair. That's what I'd do.

He was an action hero to me as a kid. Anything on the telly was exciting.

He couldn't do the high kicks like Emma Peel in The Avengers, but you'd still cheer for him.

I remember watching Ironside and being quite young, thinking that is absolute nonsense.

It was quite cool cos he had an accessible van.

Oh, van envy? It's not big and it's not clever!

I don't know what people in '70s Britain were complaining about(!)

Ironside may have had his wheels, but they had these!

-# Make way for Noddy

-Noddy!

# He toots his horn to say... #

They weren't quite cars. They were sort of bubble car type things.

Unfortunately, we called them "spaz chariots", which is awful, but I'm just being honest.

They were fibreglass. You could tip them over quite easily. They were meant for one person.

You wouldn't want to take any friends anywhere cos disabled people don't have them(!)

I remember talking to a couple once. Both were in chairs.

They had to drive places separately as you couldn't get two wheelchairs, two people in one of these things.

It's like walking round with two big arrows pointing at you, going, "Disabled, disabled!"

Those little blue cars were funny.

Whoa! Oh, shit...

But ouch! Is that a twinge of guilt? Does laughing at disability make us bad people?

What would Thora Hird do?

Being able to laugh at disability is OK in every circumstance

that it's about social attitudes to disability.

Are you laughing at the situation or the context,

or because you can't identify with somebody you think is a freak?

-You know my legs?

-Hmm.

-Do you know how many I've always had an' that?

Like two legs or some shit like that?

Well, I've only got one leg now.

Random. LAUGHTER

In my view, all comedians deal with disability

because I think doing comedy itself is a disability.

I mean, it's basically borderline Asperger's, comedy,

because you're looking at the world and not connecting with it emotionally, basically.

Thinking that you can't make comedy out of disability, to me, is like the ultimate discrimination.

It's like, "What, we're all so delicate, we're going to collapse in a heap and cry?"

As a disabled person,

loads of bizarre stuff happens to you.

And if you didn't take the piss out of it,

you'd go mad.

Anything goes now. You don't care where people are from,

if they have disabilities. Doesn't matter in comedy. Are they funny?

A lot of comedy has a victim

and often the victim is someone who's different.

Here's a joke. A man goes to the doctor. He says, "I can't say my TH's or F's."

The doctor says, "Well, you can't say fairer than that then."

And that's a joke, in a sense, about someone with a lisp, I suppose.

'And here we are at the 3,000-metre steeplechase for people who think they're chickens.'

Tastes do change, though. 40 years ago, the Pythons were the hippest act on television.

But would this sketch get through television's PC radar today?

'They've settled down. They're on the water jump...'

Monty Python is my favourite comedy series ever.

'And here is the start of the first event of the afternoon -

'the second semi-final of the 100 yards for people with no sense of direction.'

You arguably see the changing attitude to disability

when you look at some of those original sketches.

It's on slightly soggy soil.

Today, we're much more up front, or is it knowingly ironic,

about how we laugh at, or is it with, the differences of disability.

-Hi. Nice to meet you.

-Good to meet you. This is my fiancee Claire.

-Hi.

Hi.

Extras and The Office are not documentaries, even if The Office may look like one.

They are fictions we have created. We have sent those scripts to actors who have agreed to be in them.

They never turn up and we spring it on them that we'll make a joke about their height or disability,

so they're comfortable when they arrive to do it.

-Are you sure this food is free?

-Yes.

-This is my agent.

-Darren Lamb, nice to meet you.

-This is Warwick.

-Where?

-There.

-Oh, midget. Hello.

When I walk on as a character, part of the humour is I'm an idiot.

I'm talking rubbish, but there's a visual element to it because I'm much, much taller than Warwick.

Could I fit in your house? How would it work?

Am I exploiting Warwick? Do I think he's being ridiculed in it? No.

Perhaps some people do. I don't think he does, but there we are.

-This'll make you laugh.

-What?

-Jesus, look! Pissed over there. She's had a few.

Actually, is she pissed or mental?

-Here she comes.

-That's my sister.

-Huh?

-She's got cerebral palsy.

No...

All my life I'd had a real worry

about people laughing at my walk.

And it was kind of like the ultimate liberation

to go on national TV

and kind of go, "OK, my walk IS funny - let's all laugh!"

And when I saw it, I thought, "My walk is funny. I might as well get paid for it."

Oh, God! What have you done?

-What?

-What's happened? Are you all right?

No, no. No, I've got cerebral palsy.

-Don't worry.

-Oh, good!

I was asked a lot whether it was right or PC or naughty of them

to make comedy out of my character,

but I said, "To me, I think that's the ultimate equality."

CHEERING

Francesca Martinez is an actor and a stand-up comedian,

so does having cerebral palsy mean she can make jokes

that a non-disabled comedian couldn't get away with?

Before I start, I should say that, in case you're wondering,

the correct word for my condition is, um...

sober.

I've found that stand-up comedy is such a good way

to address something like disability,

which still makes people very nervous.

-I can't play golf.

-You can't play golf?

-No, I'm hopeless.

Shit!

LAUGHTER

I'm sorry.

Were you born like that?

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I definitely think only disabled people should be allowed to make jokes about disability.

In the same sense, I think disabled people should not be allowed

to make any jokes about us normals as they don't know anything about it!

'In a large factory making water heaters, Nicholas takes his place beside a normal factory worker.'

In the past, having a disability certainly meant your life was very different from "the normals".

'Peter, who but two years previously was a helpless cripple, discarded his cage for crutches.

'Another step towards normality.'

Kids with disability went to special schools, even if they were hundreds of miles from home.

That was natural - keep the happy disabled kids all together!

'School starts with morning bell...'

We were often regarded as deeply freakish.

We were regarded as the kids from the blind school.

We were regarded as separate from the rest of society.

People would ask us bizarre questions like whether they gave us soup for breakfast, stuff like that.

And it was just an astonishing life to live, really.

'Before coming to Coombe Farm, this girl might never have known the joy

'of walking without aid into the arms of her happy parents.'

I wish I'd gone to a mainstream school right from the start.

I mean, I think as I got into my early teens,

you know, I remember thinking... "Do all my girlfriends have to be in a wheelchair?

"Am I only going to meet...

"Are these the confines that I am putting around myself? Is this going to be my normality?"

My parents got hold of the 1981 White Paper on Education, read it,

found the line that said I had a right to be educated in a mainstream environment

and threatened to sue the Secretary of State for Wales over that right,

so I grew up in this atmosphere where it was... "So what?"

That gave me a lot of confidence as a young person to do the things that I wanted.

People have assumed that wheels mean nothing up here in the brain, you know?

It wasn't really until the 1980s, following developments in the States,

that a kind of consciousness began to emerge among disabled people in Britain as well and moves...

People with what would be regarded as very high impairment levels suddenly started to think,

"Hang on, we should be allowed to live as members of this society."

Virtually nothing is unachievable with the right access and equipment.

You can do anything.

One thing that surprises me is you still come up to a new building and there'll just be a flight of steps

and you go, "That's really annoying. You've just built that."

The old building, I understand, the new building, I'm furious. You're lucky I'm too busy to write letters!

So you want access, do you?

Well, yes, when you're about to go live on television!

In 2000, we celebrated our great Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson

and forgot to put up the ramp. Oh!

Alan Shearer was presenting. "And in third place is Britain's best-known Paralympian, Tanni Grey-Thompson."

Tanni Grey-Thompson.

APPLAUSE

She couldn't get up on to the ruddy stage as there was no access for her wheelchair.

You just think, "You could not make this up!"

I could see there was no ramp, so I thought, "I'll just sit here."

So the award was eventually brought down and it was like, "Thank you very much."

Just an excruciating bit of television. Heads must have rolled all over at the BBC for that one.

Lots of people wanted me to be angry and lash out and criticise. That's not me as an individual.

It's more important to change things so it never happens again.

'A fly-on-the-wall comedy about the trials of work...'

From then on, organisers of glitzy awards ceremonies were thrown into a panic

if there was the merest suggestion of a winning wheelchair approaching the stage.

Thank you to Ash Atalla, our producer. Thanks to Anil Gupta...

I think I was the first person in a wheelchair that would be regularly nominated for awards,

so at the beginning, it was definitely an issue.

Awards organisers would phone me up in a real panic

and it became this thing where we would get a sense if we had won,

depending on how much contact the organisers had had with me.

I'd tell Ricky, "It's in the bag. They phoned to get the measurements of my chair."

You've done a wonderful thing, not for me, but look at his little face!

LAUGHTER

Yeah?

It's not just award-winners who have access problems.

Simply getting a casting call can be an issue for many disabled actors.

Old Ironside and Sandy from Crossroads didn't need their wheelchairs. They were just props.

So which was the first mainstream TV drama series to employ a disabled actor,

playing a disabled role?

-Was it EastEnders?

-No.

-Coronation Street?

-No.

-Brookside?

-No.

-I would've thought it would've been Brookside.

-Um...

-Come on.

-Um...

Come on... Do you need a clue?

-Emmerdale?

-Try again.

-Um...

Oh, for goodness sake, it was Eldorado in 1992!

-Yeah, this is all a wind-up, right?

-No, Nessa, I think he's really serious.

It was way ahead of its time because it was the first time

a disabled person ever played a disabled character,

and it was the most normal representation of everyday life that disabled people face.

He's very reliable.

It's not fair. You know what's involved and so do Dad and Blair. You're all used to me.

I got quite a lot of fan mail where people... You can't really call it fan mail,

but letters from people saying you shouldn't be able to live, let alone be on television.

You have to deal with that emotionally and figure out how to react to that and not react to that,

not to take it personally and realise that you can't please everyone all the time.

Some people just take offence to a disabled person. It could have been a black person or gay person.

It was just a minority person on TV.

Eldorado gave Julie Fernandez a regular role as a wheelchair user

on mainstream TV.

A pity then that the show was panned by the critics

and canned after only 12 months,

which was a shame because for years afterwards, none of the soaps

have done disability particularly well, if at all.

Bye!

"EASTENDERS" THEME TUNE

EastEnders is just not a great place to be in a wheelchair -

the square and the houses and the pub and the cobbles.

The Stannah Stairlift is invisible because that will take up too much screen time, it'll need explaining

and it will make a terrible noise when the cameras are rolling.

There are endless ways for disabled characters on TV

to be allowed to forget they're disabled, to oil the wheels of the story line.

How many people go in the bar at Coronation Street in a wheelchair?

People in wheelchairs don't drink? My foot, they don't!

It is that laziness of especially, I guess, those lighter soaps

where they're thinking, "This will make an exciting, interesting story,"

then, "No, if we do this, he'll have to be in a wheelchair and that'll really be annoying.

"We'll have to fold it up and put it in a car. He won't be able to go upstairs. Let's get him get better."

When soaps have done the disability thing, it's often not been good.

There's a strange and sinister trend

where disabled characters in the soaps have been either mad or bad, or both.

Nick Cotton, who is demonic, Nasty Nick through and through,

fell off a viaduct, then was in a wheelchair temporarily.

I think that sort of comes under the "punish the evil character by giving them something awful to cope with".

"Describe the problems you have and the help you need with your toilet needs."

I don't know. You put something.

Chop off the arm, chop off the leg, shove him in a wheelchair

and then as the baddie, they've got their karmic comeuppance.

I've never felt evil cos I'm a wheelchair user. There's probably plenty of people who think I'm evil.

I think that's where there's a very fine line between how you show disability.

I hate shows, for example, where a character has an emotional flaw,

so they put him in a wheelchair and he meets an understanding woman

who teaches him how to love and suddenly he can walk.

Or he was blind, then his eyes were opened metaphorically and literally.

You know, I can't stand that crap!

# Oh, neighbours... #

I'm sorry, Kiruna. The Aussies aren't any more enlightened.

In Neighbours, Paul Robinson had a foot chopped off. Well, he had been rather naughty.

Affairs, more affairs, leaving his wife an hour after the wedding,

splitting up his daughter's relationship, control freakery,

ruthless business, trying to ruin Harold's business. If anybody needed their leg off, it was that man.

It was quite a move. We hadn't seen it done on another soap before.

It's allowed the character to seem even "badder",

that he's been disfigured and punished in such a terrible way.

A very moral universe.

-# Because I'm bad, I'm bad

-Really, really bad

-You know I'm bad... #

This bizarre morality is not just confined to soaps.

Great writers, including the Bard himself, were at it.

"Now is the winter of our discontent..."

Shakespeare, what he was doing there was making a connection between disablement and badness

and that has been made over the years many, many times.

James Bond - all the baddies had something. They always had a sort of weird eye or an eye patch

or something that made them not right,

so there is a kind of link which is a bit wrong.

Captain Hook's lost a hand. He's got that scary hook. And the Daleks are pretty evil.

-Exterminate!

-And they've got the meanest wheelchairs I've ever seen.

The supreme creature, the ultimate conqueror of the Universe, the Dalek!

The Daleks were created by Davros who was a wheelchair user

and he creates a race of psychotic killing machines in his own image,

which, you know, I can't say I've ever been tempted to do that.

I can't seem to find the time, really.

No!

No!

I quite like the '70s "disability equals evil".

I'm an actor, British and disabled. That's as calculatingly evil as it can be, yet we don't get the parts.

Strange attitudes about disability aren't confined to the dramatic cliche.

In 1999, England football manager Glenn Hoddle was reported widely as having wacky views,

linking disability to some sort of cosmic justice. It cost him his job.

The Football Association sacked the England coach Glenn Hoddle because of his remarks about reincarnation.

He reportedly implied that disabled people were suffering for sins committed in a previous life.

I accept I made a serious error of judgment in an interview

which caused misunderstanding and pain to a number of people.

A sort of moment of bonkers-ness. It was so inappropriate and not that long ago.

One can't help thinking that there were a few people out there, "Yes, he speaks the truth, that Mr Hoddle."

These are ideas literally back from sort of witch-burning days.

-Whoa, what's the rush?

-It's nearly time for Big Fun Time...

Those whose opinions about disability owe much to the teachings

of the Witchfinder General are still out there.

I'm pretending to be a puppy.

-I can see some long...

-When Cerrie Burnell became a children's TV presenter,

it was meant to herald a whole new age of acceptance on television.

For Cerrie, it was the job of her dreams until some parents complained it was giving their kids nightmares.

It's almost time to turn off the torch and say "night-night".

I got a phone call saying, "Have you read The Daily Mail today?"

I expected something, certainly, but I wasn't sure what form that was going to take.

But I don't think anyone quite expected...

-SHE LAUGHS

-..the chaos of what ensued.

And I mean, it was very funny, really.

No-one wants a hate campaign against them, but it does get you fabulous PR.

"Does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?"

The thing is, when you grow up with a disability, you've heard it all.

There's nothing that you haven't heard before and I suppose in some ways you develop a thick skin to it.

Her stump is one of the most hideous things I've ever seen and it makes me want to vomit.

You wouldn't want these near any children.

She's got a bit of a stump.

She's a great TV presenter. End of.

Now here's the gallery.

Kids' TV has, on the whole, been showing the grown-ups

how to integrate disability into the mainstream.

There was Vision On using sign language.

Thanks for sending your paintings.

Ant's blinding in the shocking incident with the paintball gun on Byker Grove.

-I can't believe how well...

-I don't want a medal for living my life.

And there was Grange Hill, giving Francesca Martinez her first break.

You clumsy idiot, it's all over my skirt!

I always think children are far more accepting of difference. I think they're more honest about it.

They'll come out and say right away, "What's wrong with your leg?"

Then you tell them and they go, "Oh, cool."

Do they notice if someone's got a gammy leg or only one arm?

Or no fingers? Do they hell! They just get on with it.

You know what they want to know most? If it hurts.

When they know it doesn't hurt, they relax.

Then they want to see how you do stuff, then you show them a few things.

You say, "Mummy took a bad pill," or whatever the reason is for your impairment, and they're quite happy.

You explain to children what that's all about and they go, "OK, Mummy," and they move on.

Invariably, adults have the attitude problem.

Sometimes the adults just try too hard.

In the '70s, Blue Peter featured Joey Deacon

who had cerebral palsy and had written a remarkable memoir.

It was, no doubt, a well-intentioned attempt at educating the nation's kids about disability.

It backfired spectacularly.

Joey, you've achieved two of your ambitions. Have you got any more?

STRAINS TO SPEAK

-Write children's books.

-You're going to write children's books? Wow.

It sort of backfired in that children started calling...

..anyone who experienced any trouble kicking a football or anything "a Joey".

As someone with cerebral palsy,

yeah...

that really didn't do us any favours.

I was relieved, personally, when it became a playground insult.

Cos if you were a Joey... If you were slow at maths you were called a Joey.

The flid thing was all about being crap at sports.

So it was like, phew, I got a term off. Know what I mean?

I'll be down the pub probably.

What?

It can be, well, awkward dealing with disability.

Why are you speaking like that?

-It's a voice box.

-It's great fun. Do you get those at a toy shop?

-I haven't got any vocal chords.

-You sound like the girl in The Exorcist.

I think that's what we all really, really fear. The last thing we want to be is patronising.

That creates a lot of awkwardness.

"Do I shake her hand? Do I... Shall I just kiss her? What shall I do?"

Chaps have come up and started talking and, within a few minutes, asked if I'm capable of having sex,

which I find quite extraordinary.

"Do you have a boyfriend? Can you have sex?"

Really intimate stuff like, you know, like I'm going to talk about...really personal details

about really intimate areas of my body just because they're curious.

I remember I was in the supermarket and this woman came up and said, "Did your mother do drugs?"

I said, "I don't know. Ask her."

When people go, "Shall we go for a walk?" And...I get what that means.

That doesn't bother me in the slightest, but it horrifies people.

Or, "Step over here." That's fine.

I don't even flinch. If somebody goes, "Shall we go for a walk?" and I go, "Well, I can't walk!

"Don't be stupid," that would be a stupid, pathetic reaction on my part.

I'd much rather people said, "Ooh, what charming flippers you have. I'm sorry, I mean hands,"

than not say anything at all. And flippers is fine.

This is phocomelia. It means seal-like limbs.

Seals have flippers. It's fine. It's why I don't like playing Canada.

They might club me round the head.

-Nice of you to come. I hope you're being looked after.

-Meet Bob. He owns a garden centre.

Recent British comedy taps right into our difficulties with social awkwardness,

from Alan Partridge to the multi-award-winning The Office,

using disability as a source of often cringeworthy comedy.

I think what The Office does brilliantly, in fact, what Ricky Gervais always does brilliantly,

is shine the light in these areas we don't really want to look, don't really want to go,

but we know we should.

It was great on many levels, really.

It was such a clear indication of what not to do with a friend who's a wheelchair user.

AKA the disableds. You know, a lot of money goes to these fellas.

Not you. You're working.

But if you do claim you could probably claim for other stuff. Just don't abuse the system.

Ricky was always amused by my wheelchair. I'm amused by it.

So we did Series One and there was no disabled character.

When we started talking about Series Two, Ricky said, "I think we might bring this girl in a wheelchair

"from the Swindon branch to join Slough." And I remember at the time just thinking, "Oh, God..."

We brought in this character of Brenda because we wanted Brent

to be confronted in a way with someone in a wheelchair

and then just watch him kind of... interact with her, really.

She's joining in with it.

-Put this on? A little nose?

-No.

It's up to you. Up to her. Her own decisions.

He's selfish. He's thinking about himself. "How can I use this disabled person to make me look good?"

Not the right way to approach it.

ALARM RINGS We'll get you out of here. All right?

So...

'I think when disabled people watch

'those sorts of situations,'

they work for us as well because they're very familiar situations to us.

Ohhh.

This isn't worth it. It's stupid.

-Obviously in a real situation we'd take her all the way down.

-Can't I just use the lift?

-No.

-Not even in a drill. Never use a lift.

-We'll be out...

'I remember that day very clearly.'

I was saying to Steve and Ricky, "Please let me say something,"

and they're like, "It's stronger if you stay silent." And it was quite strong.

But the thing that scares me the most is that I've had disabled people come up to me since then

and say that actual thing has happened to them. You think, "No!"

That's happened to me. "Don't worry. We'll come back if we see flames."

I'd rather get out now, just in case!

-Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous.

-'There's one scene in the pub'

and he goes, "I'll just move you out," and just pulls her away from the table.

'And you just think, "Don't do it!"'

Oh, that's probably what... turns into it...

So, looking forward to the weekend?

That actual thing did happen to me.

I remember saying to the boys, "I was just in the pub the other night and a guy wanted to get by

"and I was just drinking and I suddenly found my wheelchair being pulled."

That is the most offensive thing that anybody can do to me.

It's not what they say, but do not move me. Do not touch my chair.

I've been in a function where somebody sat behind me with their foot on my wheel, just rocking it.

'Because they thought it was nice. And I get really quite annoyed.

'That just feels like I'm having all my power and control taken away.'

I watched it and thought, "Finally, it's actually a real portrayal

"of life in a wheelchair for a young girl."

"That's all right, Dad. We don't mind buying a drink for a cripple."

But he said, "Eh...

"B-But I ain't a cripple, son." "You will be if you don't buy the next round."

Comedy's made a big journey over the past 40 years

from the prejudices of '70s clubland through the politically-correct '80s

to the freedom now to make jokes about pretty much anything.

Oh, many of you are a bit shocked. You're close to fainting.

Those guys, the political correct guys and alternative...

Alternative comedy?

Alternative to what? Laughing?

They were commentators and not comedians. There's a lot more comedians coming through now.

And it's really good to see. Good to see.

Good comics that make you laugh! And that's what it's all about.

You don't laugh at the disability. You laugh at the people doing the lines about it.

Comedy and people's attitudes were so...wrong, basically, is the only way to put it, in the 1970s

that you could watch someone on TV making jokes about black people and women and homosexuals

and disabled people and there needed to be a reaction against that

and it was to go probably too far the other way.

If you grew up with the late '70s right on-ness and then Ben Elton

being terribly, wearyingly politically correct in the '80s,

to actually have the kind of jolt of reality of something gloriously politically incorrect

like Peter Kay's Britain's Got The Pop Factor,

a spoof talent show where there were contestants called Two Up Two Down...

Two Up Two Down!

# Tragedy When the feeling's gone And you can't go on, it's tragedy! #

'It just made me weep with laughter and a lot of other people as well,'

but the sense of that being slightly not allowed was very strong.

-You're 100% through.

-1,000% through!

Yes! Thank you!

Oh.

TOM BAKER: If you have a verruca and would like to share it with others,

why not pop down to your local swimming pool?

'Oh, look, it's me! Gosh, I'm hairy.

'Pushing the comedy envelope that little bit further has been me and Matt as Lou and Andy.'

Em, excuse me?

Andy from Little Britain was the last properly contentious disability thing my mates got pissed off about.

I thought it was quite funny.

I wonder if you'd give me a hand. I'm here with a friend who you may see is in a wheelchair.

And I need a little bit of help getting him in and out of the pool.

I did find it very funny when he ran up the diving board and dived in

cos actually I do know a few people who, em...who are a bit like that character, actually.

But he does have a slight fear of water.

You know, he...

'That seems a bit cruel to me and a bit unnecessary.'

That is a very funny sketch

and I'm slightly annoyed with myself for laughing, but it's funny.

The humour has got nothing to do with the wheelchair.

It's because he's a lazy slob!

And this wonderful, caring chap who is pushing him everywhere,

when he turns his back, he goes off and does something quite eccentric. That is funny!

It's like their disability is their need for each other

and that's what makes it funny

and human and real and quite sad, really.

What's really interesting about Lou and Andy is that all the complaints

were from non-disabled people.

'What Lou and Andy were doing was OK

'because they were actually subverting the care system.

'And for me that kind of worked.

'I've never had a disabled person find that remotely objectionable.'

Did you shower?

-Hey, hey, hey, hey!

-What?

-What?

-Give me that back!

-I'm a Vietnam veteran! Leave me alone.

I'm a Viet...

'In World Shut Your Mouth I did have an electric wheelchair'

and I dressed up as a Vietnam veteran who supposedly had no arms,

but basically was a shoplifter.

When he'd go down supermarket aisles, everyone would ignore him

and then my real arm would just steal things from people's trolleys.

Sorry. It was funny.

Yes, Dom, that was very naughty.

Mind you, it is tempting sometimes

to put on a limp, just a little one. Think of the advantages!

One good thing about being in a wheelchair is you get a lot of stuff free. You get plus one at the cinema.

And that is for a carer. That's what they call it.

So I've often made female friends dress up as nurses.

At drama school, I'd pretend to faint in pubs and they gave you a brandy.

It was my cheap way to get drinks.

We've all parked in a disabled spot outside a supermarket and got out and had to do a stupid limp.

All you need is that blue badge.

One can park right outside the shop and on double yellow lines. Brilliant.

Being able to go to the front of the queue in Disney is not bad.

First time, I had this huge guilt complex. It was, "Oh, no..."

That's the Britishness as well.

Other perks of being disabled - the mercy shag is always a good one.

Had a few of them in my time.

Thanks, Sarah, Natalie and Mary.

Well, I would never do that.

But I do confess to once - just once - using a disabled loo. Sorry.

-You can't use the disabled!

-Why not?

-It's illegal!

We've all been guilty of using the disabled toilet, let's face it.

It's nice and big, you can take your coat off and there's always a mirror.

It's a good place to have sex in if you pull on the night.

That's the way to look at it.

Shocking! That's the last time I use one.

These facilities were hard fought for and not for people too cheap to get a room.

When I was young, as a wheelchair user, there weren't accessible toilets. Anywhere.

I remember being in London as a child with my mum and dad and someone saying, "Try Paddington Station."

That was nine miles away.

When you turn up to a disabled toilet, it's almost always engaged.

And 90% of the time the person in it isn't disabled.

I can give you that as a statistical fact.

'Rather than coming out and limping, they just peg it to get out of sight very quickly.'

Ohhh.

-KNOCKING Hello? Are you all right?

-I'm disabled!

Those emergency cords exist and I have pulled one by accident.

You think it's a light

or it might be... I don't know. It could be a flush.

I'm wise to it now. You'd think if anybody would know not to do it, it would be me, but I have.

Ohh...

-Oh, my God! What happened?

-I fell off the toilet.

'Graham Linehan, who writes The IT Crowd, loves the absurd.'

And a small decision that Roy made led to him going back to Manchester on a bus

with a group of disabled people.

'That's what makes it at the end. It's the pain that Roy is under.

'He knows that he's done immense wrong and yet, because he's on a very, very slow-rising lift,

'he just has to front it out.'

Hello, there! I didn't see you on the way out.

# I'm all right, just dance... #

Some people might say, allegedly, and we're not saying this ourselves,

but there is one famous person who has perhaps, how shall I put it, been very upfront

about their disability in the celebrity arena - Heather Mills.

# Just dance! #

The way she goes about it is she picks something that she's not really cut out for,

has a go, it doesn't matter if she's shit.

It's still going to be inspirational.

Lots of people out there who are amputees, leg amputees,

could see that she did it and probably quite well considering

and it helped them, I'm sure, to realise that if she can do it then they can do it.

So from that point of view I'm really grateful to her.

Dancing on one leg on ice - I can't even stand up on ice.

On my hands and knees I'm terrified.

Deep respect. I know I should think she's brilliant. She is a great role model to all disabled people

and to her daughter and I loathe her. I can't help it.

She's a good inspiration for people who want to grab a husband.

In the dark and distant past, if you could put disability together with entertainment,

what you ended up with was the freak show.

Putting disability and entertainment together today is an unlikely pioneer - Big Brother.

Big Brother - blindness, Tourette's. Never had a wheelchair, have they? It's that MASSIVE staircase!

In 2006, Big Brother announced its first disabled contestant - Pete Bennett.

He was on there, let's face it, because he's got Tourette's and it's good TV.

I'm not... WHISTLES, BEEPS

I'm not going to win. I'm not.

I think it was great telly. He won because he was a great personality.

What started off being a novelty act... He was ticking a box. "Get a cute guy with Tourette's."

By the end of the show we knew him so well that you forgot that every other word began with F.

I came in here to have a good laugh, to have a good time.

Shut up, ya BLEEP! Shut up!

In 2008, Mikey Hughes took up the Big Brother challenge.

'The reason I went to Big Brother is, obviously, being blind'

I feel blind people are shoved away... They're almost forgotten about in society.

I wanted to launch myself onto the mainstream.

CROWD CHEERS

I came runner-up. 1.5% away from winning the show. One of the closest finals ever.

I think I got that far because I did entertain, probably not because I'm blind.

He was intensely patronised by people "helping" him.

What was fantastic was to see him puncturing these preconceptions about a person with disability.

-I see from a different perspective now.

-Definitely.

-I can see why Mikey is tired.

The sympathy vote is the big worry in a way,

but I suppose if you do win the show and get the 100 grand cheque, you think, "Nice sympathy vote!"

That's one of the joys of Big Brother that they give disabled people the right to be equally flawed,

mean, nasty, grabby, selfish as anybody else.

Aaaoow!

If Big Brother is an unlikely champion of disability portrayal, here's another surprise.

# Hearts of Gold

# Hearts of Gold! #

For many people there's nothing worse than a bleeding heart charity show. Prepare to be patronised.

'You get disabled people being given these dreadfully tacky'

hearts of gold simply because they'd lived their lives against the odds.

The irony there is that the reason they lived lives against the odds

was because... not because of their bravery and ability to triumph over tragedy,

but because of the barriers society started to put in their way.

We, as a nation, have got ourselves into, I would say, looking at disabled people as charity.

Never squat down as a disabled person in the London Underground.

People will put money between your legs. Sometimes that's quite good, if you want chips and a pint.

In the '70s and '80s you saw a lot of portrayals of disabled people

but they were part of charity telethons

and quite patronising documentaries

and appeals on Blue Peter, that sort of thing.

And when disabled people started to have a voice,

to a great extent

all of those programmes went away.

50 years has seen enormous changes in how people with disabilities are treated, talked about

and portrayed on the TV.

And there's no going back. In 2009, a comedy drama series,

a spoof reality show with Kiruna Stamell

and Mat Fraser, broke new ground. It was credible,

controversial and without a token wheelchair in sight.

Starring six disabled actors, it may have just changed television drama forever.

Six disabled characters all played by disabled actors, all played very well.

'Hugely engaging performances and people being what they are.'

What made you decide to do it?

I didn't want another programme with Born Agains moaning about how they used to be able to see or walk.

Nothing was taboo, so you got to kind of see a world that you don't very often get to see.

'The disability was always there and it was always onscreen

'and it did have an impact on the characters,'

but it was the other aspects of their life - their friendships, their relationships, who they were -

that also got space centre stage.

Oh. A nice run.

Going to take it nice and slow.

'In this day and age, if a character is disabled, they try to get an actor with that impairment to do it.'

Hopefully, spacking up, cripping up or whatever you call it, that's over.

But if more disabled actors get jobs, there's a problem.

Until now, playing disabled has been a sure-fire route to an Oscar for the normals.

Isn't it going to be discriminatory if they can't do this any more?

Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot.

Oscar.

Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man. Oscar. John Mills, Ryan's Daughter. Oscar.

-Yeah.

-Seriously.

You are guaranteed an Oscar if you play a mental.

Kate Winslet in Extras points out that the quickest route to an Oscar is to play a disabled person.

You know...

Famously... You know, in 1931 there was a film called Freaks, a great film.

It still holds the Hollywood record for the most disabled actors in it.

And there's a bloke in it called Johnny Eck who has no legs. Pretty freaky. You'd look. I'd look.

Apparently, the film rights to his story have been bought by Leonardo DiCaprio. That's what I heard.

Probably the only way he'll get an Oscar.

When able-bodied people play disabled characters, they win an Oscar. That's slightly weird.

And, you know, you can even look at an able-bodied actor playing a disabled person and think,

"It's just about the BAFTAs."

Now if you cast somebody in a disabled role that was non-disabled,

you'd be straight into a news studio having to defend yourself. You can't get away with it now.

And that's progress, isn't it?

Adam! I was getting worried. Charley said he dropped you...

More progress - soaps are featuring new disabled characters with believable storylines

played by a new generation of disabled actors. Hurrah!

-Yeah, I do shake hands.

-I knew that, I knew that.

It's brilliant that we have disabled people playing disabled characters in EastEnders and Emmerdale

and Hollyoaks. It's about time.

It's been 17 years since Eldorado.

For me, that really represents mainstream acceptance.

And the mundanity of a soap, in a way I think it really allows

for the representation of disability to be much more naturalistic.

Statistically,

there should be about four or five characters in there who are disabled.

And gradually we've seen that happen with EastEnders

over the last couple of years.

She presumed I was a few noodles short of a chow mein.

I love Hayley in Hollyoaks. She is having more sex than, well, me.

It disproves that old myth that you're welded to your wheelchair

with no feeling from the waist down.

Frank, how credible are those claims?

Disability is in the news as well. Literally. Look, there's ace reporter Frank Gardner in his chair

and don't the BBC love showing it? You never see Fiona Bruce's legs, but you always see Frank's wheels.

Frank Gardner's quite a good example of how things have changed. In the old days,

if there was an impairment they'd do a really tight shot on just the eyes or something.

"Don't show the difference!"

Now they're like, "Look! Look! We've got a disabled correspondent

"and we're very proud of him and his disability, which we're equal about!"

Where there's discrimination

sometimes tokenism is the only way to begin to shift that.

I think it's worse not to have anyone on that's different

for fear of being tokenistic

than it is to be labelled tokenistic.

Statistics show that approximately one woman in ten doesn't hear as well as she should...

It can be complicated, this brave new world of inclusion.

Cast a deaf actor in a deaf role and you can still get in a right old muddle.

Recently I was casting a deaf actress. Some actresses came in

and they were deaf, but didn't sound deaf. And they would say, "Do you want me to deaf it up?"

And I found myself going, "Yeah, could you sound a bit more deaf?"

They'd go, "You know I am deaf?" I'd say, "But you don't sound deaf. If I cast you, I'll get in trouble

"for not casting a deaf person, so sound deafer."

We have got quite a long way to go, but it is so good to see

that finally some disabled people are getting into really good positions.

George W Bush.

-Thank you.

-If you're a disabled performer and want equality,

that does mean you're going to be judged equally with everyone else... and might not like what you hear.

There used to be a reviewer for the Evening Standard who did a brilliant quote about something I was in.

"Normally I believe in seeing the personality, not the disability,

"but Mat Fraser's biggest disability is his personality." Very good.

It's good to make jokes like that.

There's more freedom to explore it maturely. You don't have to be as cut and dried now.

You're allowed ambiguity, subtlety.

I don't want special treatment because I'm disabled. I'd like a fair crack of the whip.

It's like civil rights movements in America in the '60s.

Would Obama be President if it wasn't for the civil rights action in the 1960s?

So I hope to be Prime Minister one day.

-# Reasons to be cheerful, part three

-One, two, three...

-#

From Big Brother to Downing Street is some career curve,

but as celebrity wannabes like Mikey brazen it out,

it does seem that on TV and in the wider world, the person is emerging from behind the disability.

BOTH: Happy birthday!

When children's TV presenters want to move on to adult work,

they kind of do FHM or whatever.

I mean I just would never do that, but...I think it's funny that that's the question I'm asked.

"We've seen your arm. Now let's see your tits."

And that, dear viewer, is progress.

Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd - 2010

Email [email protected]