Chris Packham: Asperger's and Me

OK.

Right, where should we start?

I should tell you that I have

a problem just going off on one, sometimes.

So at the moment now, you see, I'm thinking about...

I'm talking to you, but I'm actually thinking about ME163s,

which were a type of aircraft, a rocket aircraft.

In fact, they were the only rocket aircraft.

So now I'm thinking about the ticker tape parade that the astronauts did

when they got back from the moon in 1969.

And they did that on the 13th of August.

My name is Chris Packham.

What you probably don't know,

because I've been hiding it most of my life,

is that my brain is different than yours.

Because I'm autistic.

Astronaut, Neil Armstrong.

Neil, he was sort of a troubled soul.

Died on the 25th of August, 2012.

August was a big time for him

because the ticker tape was on the 13th, like I said.

That's how my mind goes from one thing to another.

It becomes these sort of cascades.

It's memory. I just have a memory.

It's exhausting, it doesn't make any sense,

it's intensely irritating to people.

Cor, that was good!

This tale has got a sting in it.

My type of autism is called Asperger's.

I've experienced many things on Springwatch today.

I've spent 30 years on the telly,

trying my best to act normal,

when really, I'm anything but.

Bad times. It's been immensely difficult.

You know, there were times when I fought it, I really fought it.

I didn't want to be different.

Now, I've decided that I want to talk about my Asperger's.

I want people to try and understand what it's like to be me.

There's a lot about me which is pretty normal.

There's a lot of other things which are not quite so normal.

This is the story of my life.

The past...

..and the present.

How those who love me have learnt to live with me.

He is like an alien. It is like he's landed, basically.

As a young man, there was absolutely nothing available to help me.

But now, I'm going in search of radical new therapies

that might be able to improve my life

and the lives of millions of others.

Stay back! Stay back!

Treatments aimed at making us more normal,

stripping us of our autistic traits.

If a cure for autism ever became available,

would I choose to take it?

I live in this house in the New Forest.

And it's in the middle of a huge patch of woodland.

Come on, Scratch. Let's go.

You've got a filthy arse.

This is always my favourite part of the day,

getting up in the morning and going out into this place

with...with the Scratch.

Scratch is my best mate.

I love him more than anything on this planet

and all of my love is focused entirely upon him.

It's intense and it's real.

Just him being happy here makes me happy.

It's guaranteed. It's like the switch comes on.

And in human relationships,

because of the complexity of them, and the various problems with them,

they don't always make you happy, even when you want them to.

Come on, Scratch.

My Asperger's is one of many conditions

on the broad autistic spectrum.

I'm lucky to be high-functioning,

but there are still some areas where I really just don't have a clue.

People like myself are clumsy, socially.

So even now, as an adult,

having learned, you know, how to minimise that,

I still constantly make mistakes.

Let's be honest, I suspect that many people find me a little bit weird,

which is one of the reasons why I've chosen to live all on my own

in the middle of the woods.

I can't think when I last saw another human being here.

Scratcher.

Yeah, people invite me to parties and it's like, you know,

"I'm having my 50th party." "Where is it?" "It's in Wales."

"What? I'm going to go to Wales,

"to go to a party to stand in the corner

"and not talk very much to people?"

I haven't been to a party for ten years or something.

I don't have that need for that sort of social contact, at all.

If you have autism,

there's an enormous breadth of how that impacts upon your life,

and I think it varies from having a few traits,

which might be perceived as quirky or difficult socially,

and many, many people will have those,

and at the other end, I think that it is fair to call it a disability.

I'm not a typical autistic person,

because there is no typical autistic person.

Look at that. Look through there now.

That's really quite a nice sight.

This is an inordinately complex environment.

It's quite challenging to be here

because there's so much to see, and when

I'm looking at it, it's all coming in really, really quickly.

It's like swamping.

There's one aspect of my Asperger's that you may not expect.

You see, I experience the world in a very different way to pretty much

everyone else. There's like a... imagine like a hyper reality.

It's not just about seeing it, it's about hearing,

it's about smelling it, it's about tasting it, it's about everything.

I mean, there's a very distinct smell of this time of spring.

It's quite ripe, it's quite moist,

so if it rained now, this afternoon,

the smell would change quite radically

and it would be much more intense.

Sound-wise, obviously there's that jet that's going over.

I can hear the traffic in the distance

and then you've got the natural sounds that are here.

So that was a blackbird rattling over there, there's robins calling,

now there's a blackbird calling.

I can hear blue tits going.

Erm...

BIRDSONG

Oh, just heard a chaffinch singing.

There's layers of birdsong going on.

This sensory overload is a constant distraction and

it's had a hugely isolating affect on me, ever since I was a small boy.

I grew up in Southampton in the 1960s and back then,

Asperger's wasn't a properly recognised condition.

As a child, were you aware that you were different?

Not really. I think, when I look back on it,

what was clear was the depth of the obsessions

was so much greater than any of my peers.

When I got into things, I was really into them,

to the point that everything else was pretty much excluded.

This was my first fox skull I collected when I was a kid.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

Absolutely beautiful.

And it's still got... D'you know what? It's still got a slightly dry,

meaty smell, and that's a smell that's come from the late '60s.

Yeah.

At primary school, I didn't have a need for friends.

If I'm very honest with you,

there were far more interesting things

happening in a dirty old pond, just over the fence.

Every year, I would collect tadpoles.

It was one of the highlights of my year.

It was better than Christmas and my birthday.

Tadpole time was absolutely THE time of the year.

At that point in my life,

I had an enormous hunger and thirst for everything that lived,

that I could find.

It didn't matter what it was.

I wasn't repulsed by anything.

I was absolutely enchanted by every living thing.

I wanted to own every single sensory input I could get from it,

as intensely as possible.

It's obvious you're going to taste it, isn't it?

It is to me.

They were like little blobs of semolina,

and when I focused them back to

the tip of my tongue so that I could bite into them, they tasted earthy.

I mean, you know, it doesn't seem weird to me.

When you first lick the backside of a beetle

that's oozing a yellow fluid

and it's bitter on the taste of your tongue,

as if you've licked a dirty old sixpence,

and it doesn't go away for an hour,

that's a really quite, sort of, powerful thing.

I didn't know that my heightened sensory perception

was an autistic trait until much later.

And neither did my family.

OK, so I'll just show you what I've got. It's quite funny.

Jenny is my younger sister.

So these are the old bits.

Oh, my goodness!

Look at you looking at me in that one there.

Really protective.

In many respects,

Mum and Dad completely facilitated your enthusiasms.

-Obsessions?

-Obsessions for things.

And that was all good. It's just that when things went bad,

they didn't know why, and that was when things weren't so good.

I think the impact upon my sister

was probably that I commanded way too much of the attention

in the house.

My interests were sort of overpowering,

and because I wouldn't stop going on about stuff.

I always sort of describe myself as Muttley, actually.

I think I was Muttley to Chris, really.

I was always the assistant.

It was me having to do something I was so uncomfortable with, actually.

You know, have sort of tadpoles on my ear, have snakes round my neck.

You know, I was forever standing at the bottom of trees

in nettles looking for birds' nests.

And doing things that were all about you.

You know, we had a conversation a

little while ago and I said, "Chris, with this Asperger's,

"you're not really understanding

"the subtleties of, you know, what people mean, etc,

"how come you're so good at manipulating people?"

And he said it's because he...

"I don't really care about them that much."

But you probably don't realise how sort of inspiring you were

to all of us, actually,

and how much you'd triggered in us all to be interested in things.

Yeah, that's good.

Come on, Scratcher.

I wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's until I was in my 40s.

I've had to spend my life coming up with ways of coping with this

condition by rigorously controlling my environment.

This is my space.

This is where I try to relax and try to be more me than anywhere else.

I mean, I have the blinds down

and that's about keeping the outside world outside,

and it's about keeping this environment controlled,

because if you have the windows open, you can see things changing,

and the sun goes in and out and the leaves come off the trees

and everything's sort of constantly, you know, a dynamic flux.

If I can control that, then I can feel comfortable.

You know?

Nowadays, there's a huge push towards finding effective treatments

for autism, so I'm packing to go in search of anything

that might make my life a little bit easier.

So these ones have never been worn.

These ones have never been worn.

I want them to be the same as the ones I've already got,

so I'll buy three in one go.

I really like this shirt.

Sort of quite retro. So I bought three of those.

One of the things that I like to do,

again it's a comfort thing,

is to wear the same clothes and eat the same food all the time.

So there's three of these.

The fleeces are all in order and they're in colour order,

or they're in manufacturer order,

and then you've got the same with the puffer jackets

and then the raincoats right at the end.

Um... So no...

It's... Um...

Sorry, I'm just straightening all these up, that's all,

cos it's neater if they're straight.

They've all got to face in the same direction.

And yeah...

I suppose that might strike people as odd.

I think that one of the reasons I like hiding in my own world,

living in the woods in the middle of nowhere with my dog

is because there, effectively, I'm normal.

I'm not autistic.

Of course, when I get in my car and drive out the gate

into the rest of the world, it's not quite so good.

I'm going to America, where controversial new therapies

are being developed that aim to change who we fundamentally are.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the idea of trying to cure autism.

I mean, in many ways, it's defined my life, from its highest highs,

to its most devastating lows.

I'm in Providence, Rhode Island,

to witness a trial of a radical new treatment.

TMS - transcranial magnetic stimulation,

which is being investigated in the treatment of autistic people

to see if it can modify their behaviour.

It's electrodes.

It's electromagnetic radiation in the brain.

Scientists still don't conclusively understand what causes autism.

One theory is that certain parts of the brain

may be over or underactive.

TMS uses an electrical pulse to try and stimulate these areas.

It's being trialled here at

Brown University by Dr Lindsay Oberman.

-How are you?

-Lindsay Oberman, nice to meet you.

All right, good.

All right.

What's the matter with the weather, Lindsay?

It's terrible. I'm sorry about that!

I can't control that.

So this is a TMS machine.

So what we should have said is, of course, that you're applying

-electromagnetic force...

-Yes.

-..induction,

causing neurones to fire in the brain.

Yes, exactly. So it's going to

be focused down to about a centimetre acute.

-So it's accurate to within one centimetre?

-Yes.

All right, Patrick, so we're ready for you.

21-year-old Patrick is halfway

through this six-week clinical trial of TMS.

-Morning, Patrick.

-Hi.

-How are you?

-Fine.

-Good.

-Hi, I'm Joanne.

-Hello, Joanne. How are you?

-David?

-Chris. Chris, sorry.

-That's all right. One point!

All right.

So how are you doing today?

-Fine.

-Patrick lives at home with his mum,

and, like me, he struggles with social interactions.

It's hoped that TMS might be able to help him.

You can help somebody who has that difficulty with, say,

understanding other people's facial expressions.

They say, "You know, I just can't read other people's emotions."

Well, we can stimulate a part of the brain that we think is related

to that ability, and that could have a really great change

on their quality of life. OK, lean back.

All right. How does that feel?

-Fine.

-Is that OK?

-Hm-mm.

-We'll put in a series of 600 pulses in 40 seconds.

And it's that 600 pulses

in 40 seconds that's the actual intervention.

You're doing fine. You're about halfway done.

You're doing fine.

There we go.

Just a few more pulses.

OK, and you're done.

What we're witnessing here is very much an exploratory trial, isn't it?

Yes, it is not yet established as a treatment.

-But what's your gut feeling? Do you think it'll work?

-Absolutely.

I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think so.

Patrick, do you like the idea

of this piece of machinery changing your brain?

I guess so.

Sometimes when I make mistakes around people and stuff,

I think of ways how I could change and stuff.

And if you can't do it yourself, because that's incredibly difficult,

-this machine might help.

-Good.

And if the trials work out,

would you come back and have the treatment?

Yeah, next time maybe I'll bring a movie to watch, too!

Patrick hasn't reported

any noticeable effects whilst on the trial.

Would I have, you know, TMS?

Categorically not a chance

would I allow anyone to put electrodes anywhere near my brain.

One cubic centimetre.

That's going to stick with me in my mind. That's a big area.

There are millions of neurones in there.

But at the same time, you know, I've got to say, the other side of me,

there's a real dichotomy here, the other side of me is a scientist,

and I think you've got to pioneer.

Sometimes you've got to sail

to the edge of the world to see if you sail off or if it's round.

You've got to start at the bottom of the ladder.

Maybe that's what this is.

Maybe this is the bottom of the ladder.

You've brought up an autistic son.

I think a lot of people probably don't realise the enormous amount

of energy, and the difference that impacts on the family.

-That's hard.

-It's very hard,

and that's why autism's very isolating for families.

It's exhausting to meet the needs, to meet the safety.

You know, there's divorce, there's bankruptcies,

because everything goes into the safety,

wellbeing and treatments for our kids.

It is, you know, painful to watch.

I've been there, I've struggled myself,

so, in that sense, you're looking for any form of cure at times.

You see him failing, and that's...

That's uncomfortable.

If another therapy arose whereby you could cure autism,

what would you think of that?

I think on a bad, frustrating day, I'd say yes.

I think on a day like today, where I've never been so proud of him,

I'd say no.

It's complicated, but on the bad days, absolutely.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, I've had some bad days.

I might have taken a pill if it could make it all go away.

-Hm-mm.

-But on good days, very definitely not.

-Thank you, Pat.

-You're welcome.

-Thank you very much.

-You're welcome.

You're most welcome. I hope it works out for you.

-Yeah.

-Keep coming.

I will.

Help the doctor.

Yeah.

What's been the lowest point in your life?

Well, the lowest point...

Um, the kestrel dying was like

a very low point.

So, yeah, it was a catastrophic event.

This is where I grew up. And this is the house where I grew up,

number ten.

Look, there's a little bit of graffiti down here.

So I...for some reason, felt compelled to carve my name there.

But more importantly, I carved the word "kestrel" in here, look.

I was so obsessed with kestrels.

All I would think about all the time was kestrels, kestrels, kestrels.

When I was in my early teens,

I decided that I wanted to keep a kestrel,

so I applied for a licence.

At that time, you needed to apply for a Home Office licence

to remove a bird like a kestrel from its nest from the wild.

But it wasn't granted,

and this all came when conflict with the outside world

was just about to explode.

Looking back on it, I was beginning to recognise the fact that,

you know, I was a little bit different

than the other kids in the class.

They didn't want to listen to a 15-minute monologue about, you know,

the breeding behaviour of the kestrel.

And they liked girls, you know.

Thinking back, I was already just ferociously determined.

I wasn't really going to let anyone I didn't know,

didn't have any respect for, tell me what to do.

So I found a nest.

I climbed up, and there were young kestrels in it,

and I took one of them out.

This is the tree.

And at that point - oh, God - I was very, very excited.

I was absolutely exalted.

It was extremely beautiful,

and I loved it with an enormous, you know, passionate amount of energy.

So the obsessive interest and the, you know,

intense focus on that one organism

meant that I could just exclude everything else.

And that's what happened.

All that existed was just us two.

This is the field, obviously, where I flew the kestrel.

I mowed a strip...

A strip of grass.

I made a hole in the ground where I could put the bird's block,

and the bird would sit on the block

and I would fly it in that direction.

Never going to beat that.

It was just perfect.

It's a strange arena, isn't it,

this little patch of grass between all of these houses?

To, you know, actually be the place where...

..I was at the happiest I've ever been in my entire life.

It was the first thing that I formed a really powerful bond with.

It was some sort of mental love missile,

and I just lit the touch paper and fired myself into it

at oblivious speed, and it exploded and sparkled

and it was totally beautiful.

I don't think that I've ever loved anything as intensely.

It was perfect, only it was perfect every day for six months.

Until the end.

The kestrel... Um... Er...

It did die.

I buried it right underneath the nest.

So I came every year from '75...

HE SIGHS

..on the day.

Because I still feel that that was...

..an enormous sort of turning point, really.

And the impact that it had...

just goes on.

And I know that's crazy.

A lot of people are just going to think, "That's mad,

"you're just standing in a patch of nettles underneath an oak tree.

"Where a bird died, a long, long time ago."

Too big for a small boy?

Way too big for a small boy.

A small boy that didn't really connect with other small boys,

or most adults, either,

but that only connected with what's buried in the ground down here.

So when that suddenly didn't exist...

..um, there was nothing left,

so it was catastrophic.

You know.

What it did

was highlight my vulnerability.

So after that, I was always scared,

frightened - terrified, actually -

of losing the things that I loved.

And that's, you know,

quite a burden.

Had you asked me whether I wanted curing in my teens,

I might have been interested, on occasion.

You know, I would sit there and I'd think, "Oh, goodness me,

"wouldn't my life be easier if I could just do this?"

You know, just...

..get on with people without it being such a struggle.

There are an estimated 25 million autistic people in the world.

When I was growing up,

the only option for me was mainstream education,

but now, here in America,

a systematic approach to eradicating autistic traits is being rolled out

in specialist schools across the country.

Lisa, three years old, has been autistic from birth.

It's based on a technique first developed in the 1960s.

She doesn't speak.

She doesn't play with toys.

This is applied behavioural analysis

to retrain autistic children.

Lisa tantrums when anyone attempts to teach her.

Sit.

Good girl!

Trying to replace the tantrum with her sitting down.

But he's all over her. He's touching her.

She's in a really complex environment.

Lisa's tantrums are ignored or not reinforced,

so they should decrease or extinguish.

Sit down.

Sit.

-Good girl!

-That's it!

Here in the United States,

applied behavioural analysis is the perceived panacea when it comes to

treating autistic children.

It's widely practised.

People take children from very young ages and they put them through this

rigorous, repeated behavioural modification.

The teacher discovers that kissing is a reinforcer for Lisa.

It's not a very comfortable watch, though, to be honest with you.

Applied behavioural analysis, ABA,

is now taught in hundreds of specialist schools

all over the United States, and I've come to one of the biggest ones.

It's an hour outside of Boston.

Me, moo...

Try and start...

Right, say it one more time.

Many of the children here have

a far more severe form of autism than I have.

Not only do they struggle with social interactions,

but many of them are nonverbal.

Me, moo, me.

-Ryan's turn.

-Me, moo, me.

Nice job! Do you want another bubble?

Although this technique has obviously moved on

from its early days in the 1960s,

it still follows a system of rigorous repetition.

The idea is that by doing the same tasks over and over again,

autistic behaviour can be stamped out,

making the child more socially normal.

You're not doing it!

Never, never!

I feel really uncomfortable. It's just a mass of noise and colour.

It's not symmetrical. There's stripes all round the walls.

The windows aren't in line.

You know, everything else is chaos.

But, yeah, I think it's a pretty intense day.

For me, there's some sort of fundamental questions to be asked

about the purpose of this sort of education.

ABA has been largely rejected in the UK

on the grounds that it's trying to force autistic children

to be something they're not.

Vinny, can I start?

-Yeah, please.

-Vincent Strully is the school's founder.

Autism is such a broad thing. We're all different.

You're absolutely convinced that at the moment

that ABA is the best one to treat autistic kids?

My position, hand over heart is, people said,

"Well, this is behaviour modification.

"It's artificial, robotic, manipulative."

But so was chemotherapy in the early days of cancer treatment.

People said it was poisonous,

it would kill the patient rather than help them.

ABA is the way forward,

and 30-50% of them will lose their diagnosis after one to two years

-of early intensive...

-Hold on, when you say lose their diagnosis,

that would mean if they were re-diagnosed for autism,

they wouldn't fall within the set that currently qualifies?

Correct.

Professional observers would not be able to tell the autistic child.

This is educational chemotherapy for these kids.

We wouldn't deny them the chemical and medical chemotherapy

they need for their cancer,

but to deny them the work that we and our colleagues

around the country are doing successfully

is, you know, it's just wrong.

If you could, would you cure autism?

If I could, of course.

That would be a prayer come true.

Let's be really clear about this.

I don't like the idea of comparing autism to a cancer

that requires a sort of educational chemotherapy.

For me as a child with Asperger's,

I just don't think this rigid system would have worked.

But for many parents, schools like this must seem like the only option.

If you are faced with a form of autism

which is seriously debilitating,

then obviously you are going to crave a solution for that.

I fully understand why

parents in particular would want to explore any of those avenues,

to try and normalise, to some extent,

their child.

But for people like myself with Asperger's,

you know, there's a simple therapy,

and that is,

just be on your own.

I have chosen to live in the woods on my own,

but this doesn't mean, of course,

that I don't need to have relationships,

just like everyone else.

There are a handful of people in my life that I'm close to.

We're on the Red Funnel ferry to the Isle of Wight...

..to see Charlotte, my partner, and she owns the Isle of Wight Zoo.

Charlotte and I don't live together.

-We never have.

-Does that distance suit you?

I wish you hadn't asked that question!

Because...

..I mean, I like my own space a lot, you know.

We've been together for ten years, she told me, this year,

and, um, so that's pretty good.

I get bored with things really, really quickly, you know,

so the fact that I'm very definitely not bored with Charlotte

after ten years, if living apart is part of that,

then maybe there's a good side to it.

Hello.

Greet him, greet him.

Greet him.

Greet him.

Hey.

Hey.

-Charlotte?

-Hm?

How did you meet Chris?

I'll deal with the lemurs.

Um...

It's so long ago, I can hardly remember.

I fancied Charlotte straightaway,

but she didn't fancy me. That's the truth of it.

-Is that right?

-That's what I say, and she never disagrees with it.

I just didn't know when you invited me out what you wanted.

I was just perplexed as to what you wanted.

You hadn't given me any clues.

Yeah, I'm not very good at those sort of signals, am I?

-Clearly not.

-But I'm still not very good at those signals, am I?

Come on, porks.

No, I won't.

Come on. I know it's really bright and sunny out here,

and you're a nocturnal animal.

Don't be nasty!

Look at those teeth! Look at those teeth.

He is like the porcupine whisperer, look!

He's like the porcupine whisperer!

When it comes to communicating about how he feels emotionally,

then he finds that hard.

He's unable to empathise.

But I think that is, for me, has probably been the biggest challenge.

It's just really confusing because it's such an innate thing.

Normally, it's such an instinctive thing to have compassion,

even for people that you don't know, you know,

but for Chris, it's not on his radar, at all.

Can I have some of your worms?

Thank you.

No, no, we've had this argument already!

You're not having that.

Is this a sort of typical romantic day out for you two?

We did go for a picnic, didn't we?

We've been for a picnic.

We went for a picnic. Occasionally,

I drag you out to like a tea gardens or something.

With other humans there.

Yeah. Generally I wish that I hadn't.

I would like to do more different things.

So what about that time when I booked to take you to Cornwall

for your birthday. There was a horrible silence,

which was a bit upsetting.

I'm not very good at socialising.

I now just know that there's just no point.

Like, I've got a friend's wedding coming up soon.

I haven't even mentioned it to you.

But there's no point forcing you

to be there if you don't want to be there, is there?

That's what I would say.

Sometimes I might still try.

So basically, I've got a wedding coming up,

do you want to come with me?

No, thanks.

For all the extra hard work, and sometimes it is, and, you know,

the times when you just think, "Oh, geez," you know,

it seems, like, impossible sometimes to make progress.

Um... But, yeah, I think the return is really definitely worth it.

He's fascinating.

He's a fascinating character.

And there's a lifetime guarantee with Chris.

Never would I be bored!

We've been together for ten years,

and I'm still fascinated by his mind.

Isn't that nice?

Hey?

Oh, yes.

I'm very lucky to have found someone who will put up with the constant

social failings that come with my Asperger's.

But 30 years ago,

any interaction with anyone my own age was catastrophic.

So this is the school that I went to.

This large comprehensive.

The trouble with going back to places like this,

it's a catalyst to expose things

that otherwise you wouldn't normally think about.

I was a spazza and a spacka and a cretin and a moron.

Kids beat other kids up.

But that wasn't as bad as where they would be coming down here,

yabbering on about all of their parties and all that sort of stuff,

and I'd feel completely alienated.

It was the exclusions that were particularly cruel.

I was at the most vulnerable point in my life.

I'd been rejected by my peers. I didn't know who I was.

What made me upset was I didn't understand it.

I didn't understand why, you know,

that I was getting picked on and excluded.

It was the confusion that was the agony.

You know, that was the problem.

I took a whole series of photographs in my late teens,

and they were all sort of suicidal pictures

so they were either pictures of me dead or about to die.

It's just pretentious twaddle.

But underlying all of that,

and particularly when I got to this stage,

I was very, very unhappy.

If you're isolated,

then it's harder for you to find help when you need it.

Did you try to kill yourself?

Yeah.

I thought about it really seriously.

Three times. Once in 1984,

and then twice in the early 2000s,

when on both occasions, I was, you know, yeah, very serious about it.

But I was with the...the dogs.

And they loved me, and I couldn't let them down.

After I left school, I went on to university to study zoology.

And although I was years off being diagnosed,

it was already clear to me by this point

that I had to develop my own ways of dealing with being different.

By the time I got to university, I'd come up with a strategy,

and the strategy was really simple -

don't interact with people of your own age,

just turn up, get straight As.

And I wouldn't speak to anyone.

I had no idea why, you know, I was different,

you know. So I was confused, inordinately angry. I was raging,

absolutely raging.

That was when the punk rock thing started,

so that was quite advantageous for me.

The punk rock thing was a means of me physically identifying

to everyone else that I was different.

And I felt empowered by that.

This is called Shout Above The Noise,

and of all the punk records, this is the most important for me.

I think punk, you know, did save me.

That music sounded like I felt.

Confused and angry.

Don't let them win, don't let them drag you down,

shout above the noise.

So, yeah, that's my life anthem.

Shout Above The Noise by Penetration.

When I left university, I was obviously virtually unemployable.

I was obsessed with natural history, and I didn't know what to do.

But my sister said to me,

"Why don't you go on TV and talk about animals?

"Because that's all you ever do, talk on and on and on about animals.

"If you went on TV, you could bore

"the rest of the world and not just our family about it!"

I didn't know it at the time,

but my Asperger's got me an early break on a kids' wildlife show.

You see, I had something that my peers didn't,

and it was a vast encyclopaedic knowledge of the natural world.

But the night before the first recording,

I was racked with anxiety.

I was thinking to myself,

"Right, I've got no problem with the animals,"

but I'd have to be in a room with a whole load of people

that I didn't know, and I'd have to be able to behave myself.

And I've got a photograph of me, a self-portrait,

having just made a list of the things that I would need to do

to be able to work in that environment,

and the things that I had to stop myself from doing.

Top of the list was to look at them, make eye contact.

Don't interrupt people. Don't say what you think.

Because most of the things I thought

were incompatible with the things that they would think.

And then I'd sort of try and engage with people.

Hey, hey, look at this. This is what I did in my summer...

So that they would understand I was genuinely listening to them.

When, in fact, probably, I wasn't. I was thinking about something else!

How long are a tiger's claws?

Well, I think that'd be a good one for you, Chris.

Well, thanks, Terry, that's very, very kind of you!

It's also going off on one about something

which is not connected to the topic of any relevance at the time.

So what with their razor sharp talons,

their beautiful stripes and asymmetrical stripy...

And I was thinking to myself, "Calm down, just get back into the zone,

"get back into the zone where you don't constantly do that," you know.

I mean, what might we see today, you know?

We can do a lot better than that.

I'm sure we'll find some interesting plants for a start.

People always overlook plants.

'But I have to say, it was exhausting,'

and I would get very upset with myself when I was failing,

and it continues to this day.

Now, I'm tempted to sort of jog into the tepee, like

Bruce Forsyth!

'30 years on,

'managing my Asperger's on telly

'so I seem relatively normal still requires an enormous effort.

'I've taught myself to manage some of my personal traits.

'Sometimes I fail.'

I do just go off on one.

You know when we were kids and we

used to get those plastic toys in cereal packets?

You know, build a Spitfire or a tyrannosaurus or something?

An owl pellet, sealed in a little piece of plastic!

I might speak to Deborah about this later!

I'll take this to the Den.

I'm thinking, owl pellets in cornflakes!

Let's move on! Let's move on very quickly...

But then the people I'm working with laugh at it more than anything now.

They think it's funny.

Thankfully!

This is a budgie we've got on here.

I think I must speak to the artist later.

That's all we've got time for today.

Please thank my guests. We'll see

you again at 6.30pm tomorrow night. Goodbye!

I realise now that there's no way I could do my job without Asperger's.

What I do in terms of just making

this programme is afforded to me because of my Asperger's,

because of my neurological differences here,

so that's being able to see things with perhaps a greater clarity,

to see the world in a different way,

in my case, in a very visual way.

But, you know, I've been able to understand that,

and that's something which was a painful process to go through,

but I did it and now

I'm very fortunate to be able to reap the benefits of that,

and not all autistic people are in that position.

There are many aspects of Asperger's which are enormously positive,

and there must be many other people out there who could contribute

in an immensely productive way

who aren't able to do so

because they can't quite manage some aspects of their life

in the way that I do in order to make it productive.

In the UK, only 14% of autistic adults are in full-time employment.

And that's the lowest amount for any notifiable disability.

And that is a tragic loss.

Up until now, everything I've seen in America has been designed

to fundamentally change who we are.

But there is one place that's been

harnessing some of the special gifts that autistic people have -

our obsessive focus,

our ability to see the world from different perspectives.

Here we are in Silicon Valley,

and the thing to remember is that

people with autistic traits made this place happen,

and people with autistic traits made NASA happen.

We got to the moon, we networked the world,

and we wouldn't have been able

to do it without people with autistic traits.

Author Steve Silberman has written extensively

about the contribution that

autistic people have made to the explosion of the tech industry.

It's NASA and Samsung tech.

I mean, you know, these places are

full of particular minds which are doing extraordinary things.

Before the advent of the tech industry,

these kids would have been considered weirdos.

Now they're running the world!

And, you know, one of the people that we spoke to who's involved with

therapies for autistic people came pretty close to saying,

when I asked them, if you could cure autism, rid the world of it,

they said yes.

Wow, that's horrifying.

You know, I mean the word cure,

I think, is absolutely toxic in the autism community,

and the excuse in a sense -

well, it's easier to change the

individual than it is to change society.

That's it. That's at the core of all of this, though, isn't it?

-Yeah, it is.

-All of these therapies, all of these things

are basically just saying, "Let's force these people,

"rather than adapt to accommodate them."

Absolutely. So we have to start

redesigning society instead of redesigning the individual.

A change is happening in some of the largest companies in the world.

Neil Barnett is pioneering

a new recruitment process here at Microsoft.

Typically and notoriously,

autistic people struggle to get jobs in the first place.

A lot of them basically just struggle with the interview process.

Right, right. So we've created this programme where folks come in and we

actually bring them in for a week to do an interview, versus one day,

which is the typical interview.

What we change with focusing on candidates that are on the autism

spectrum is bringing them in, letting them have a more...

Reducing the stress, hopefully.

And then letting them showcase their skills.

So we do this over a five-day period.

I've got to be honest with you, Neil,

I couldn't work in this office, personally.

It's still Christmas!

There's all sorts of snowflakes hanging from the ceiling.

We have individuals that ask for a closed office with a door.

-And you're able to provide that?

-And we're able to provide that.

We're finding great untapped talent that normally we would not see,

and these individuals are creating

software being used by millions of people.

Jacob, tell me your story?

Like me, Jacob, a lead software architect,

had a difficult time growing up.

I was perfectly intelligent.

I was actually considered genius-level intelligence,

but they said I wasn't socially developed enough

to move onto the next grade in school.

It was very hurtful.

To be perfectly frank, I felt like a black sheep most of the time.

I got a job at Microsoft,

and that eventually led to a number of positions,

each one building up my skill set and my resume.

So your perseverance was worthwhile in the end.

I mean, you've managed to get yourself to somewhere

where your particular and peculiar skills are valued.

That's true. And it's also led me

to more independent economic freedom as well.

Here's a truth for you - there are so many parallels between us,

the way that we've both had to sculpt a means of adapting socially

to further our progress in life,

and also, some of the pains that we've obviously shared as a result.

Imagine all those people trapped in their room because

they're isolated by this condition.

They haven't been able to sculpt opportunities,

manage themselves in a way that allows them to fulfil their lives.

That's like a ghastly sentence set in a vile fairy tale.

No-one should be imprisoned by this condition.

They should be allowed to exalt in those aspects of the condition

which empower them.

You know, that difference is such a, you know, valuable tool,

an enormous asset,

you know, to be able to see things, understand things,

process things and remember things in a way that most people can't do

has to be seen as a gift,

not something that you're badged with,

and it's about what you can't do.

It's got to be about what you can do.

Come on, Scratcher.

I do feel... I have this horror hanging over me

that we're making this programme and I'm saying these things

in an interval

between disasters.

I'm happy with my ability to manage my Asperger's,

and it allows me to do my job, and I've found someone who loves me,

but there's still one thing that I haven't learned to deal with,

and that is losing the things that I love.

He's got shaved sides because he had a scan last week.

He's got liver disease.

So at the moment I'm trying to spend as much time with him as possible,

you know.

I would like to be able to think

that I might get through Scratchy dying,

you know, and me being, you know,

hopelessly alone with a greater degree of success

than I have ever before

when I've lost the things that I love most.

But I'm not...

I'm not brimming with confidence.

I don't know, I just don't want to be a charlatan.

And to say that, you know, things are actually OK.

In fact, some things are better than OK.

When, you know...

..you know, it's all built on sand.

For all the contradictions, all the heartache of this condition,

what I've seen in America has made

it very clear to me that we need to understand autistic people better,

not try to change who they are.

If you offered me a cure, from my particular perspective,

from where I stand, then, no, thank you.

Every relationship I've had

in my life has been defined and made difficult by my Asperger's.

But there is one that's come surprisingly easy,

and it's the thing that I'm probably most proud of.

Remember, don't spook, because if you do, you'll spook them.

OK? So if they nibble at your fins, just let them nibble at your fins.

Because if you sort of job and turn around, they'll be gone.

-OK?

-I'm excited!

It's always good to be getting

in the water with a very large predatory animal.

Megan is my stepdaughter from a previous relationship.

Obviously I have played a role in raising Megan,

and I've found it enormously rewarding,

something that I was very surprised by.

Megs I met when she was 18 months old.

We seemed to get on sort of straightaway,

and we travelled a lot together,

been all around the world.

I was working overseas a lot at that time, so I would take Megan with me.

So I enjoyed putting an enormous amount of energy into her education.

It was, you know, and is,

one of the most important parts of my existence.

Megs is at university studying zoology,

which is a great surprise to me, really. So I'm very pleased, yeah.

What's so satisfying at the moment is that when I ring her up,

she answers the phone like this, "OK, just give me a minute."

And it's because she's in the library.

Fantastic!

Working. Christ!

About time!

Kind of every day up until this point, ever since I can remember,

you've always been someone that has been there.

You're always there to support me, no matter kind of what,

and you're reliable in that sense, which,

for me, has been really, really lovely.

Reliable. It's like a TripAdvisor report, isn't it?!

I'm getting, like, a 5-star TripAdvisor report here.

That's what it is!

It's hard...

No, but you've taught me so much in terms of not just, like,

the natural world and everything

that I've become so passionate about as well.

You've taught me everything, just life lessons.

You've given me experiences that, if I hadn't have met you,

I wouldn't have had,

so if you hadn't come into my life 20 years ago,

I would probably be in a completely different place than I am now.

Yeah.

-So...

-How many stars in this sort of Guardian TripAdvisor...

Are we doing this out of ten?

-Out of ten?

-Five.

-Oh, five.

I'll give you 4.9.

-4.8.

-4.8!

4.8.

-God, that's good!

-You can get it up to 4.9 if you come to my graduation.

No way. I swear, I'll settle for 4.8.

I'm really happy with that.

-You won't be coming to my graduation?

-No, of course not!

-Are you serious?!

-Yeah, I am, what do you think I'm going to do,

drive all the way to Liverpool to see you getting a bit of paper?!

-Yes! Yes!

-Megs!

-Chris!

-What?

I hope you have a good day.

-You are coming. We'll discuss this later.

-No, I'm not going to do that!

It's ridiculous!

-No, it's not!

-Yes!

-Don't make such a big deal out of it anyway!

-It is a big deal!

-It isn't.

Yes, it is!