Ouch Talk Show #101 September 2013
bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast

Presented by Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan

Rob	Hello, it’s Talk Show 101. We’ve picked ourselves up off the floor after last month’s sex special and we’re back to business as usual today and here’s Kate with a rundown of what’s in store. 	
kate	You might have picked yourself up, Rob, but my parents certainly haven’t. Anyway in 20 minutes we’ll be chatting with the very funny Alex Brooker, he’s one of the stars of Ouch on the telly, or as Channel 4 likes to call it The Last Leg. 	
rob	Ouch on the telly, yes sour grapes indeed. 90% of people with learning difficulties have experienced disability hate crime say the charity Mencap. We’ll be digging deep and asking how we can stop it and how quickly that could happen. Journalist Katharine Quarmby and Mike Smith from Real Answers, a disability led charity, will be here to discuss this with us. 	
kate	Music by punk band Zombie Crash plays us out, and in mere seconds we’re joined by a transport geek and a TV presenter.	
rob	So why not stay tuned. 
[Jingle: Ouch, disability talk from the BBC with Rob Crossan and Kate Monaghan.]	
kate	It’s show 101 everyone so let’s play a quick game of disability room 101. Now, Rob, you are a bit grumpy so I imagine you’ve got quite a few things that you’d like to put into…	
rob	My disability room 101. 	
kate	…yeah into room 101. So what’s the first thing on the list you’d like to banish?	
rob	There’s so many to choose from. I think the general lexicon of being termed brave or special or whatever I do somehow it doesn’t get me down. I think that kind of behaviour would definitely be in there.	
kate	I’m pretty sure you’re not brave or special, Rob.	
rob	I’m neither of the above... 	
kate	You’re definitely about happy about anything.	
rob	…as everyone knows too well. I’m delighted about so many things it just rarely happens when I’m within Broadcasting House that’s all. I’d also want to put in organised fun, annoying positivity. Whenever you, still is the case today, that when you do see people with disabilities on the telly they’re always overcoming something. And I just want to see more…	
kate	Look I overcame a lot to get here today.	
rob	…chain-smoking, drug taking misanthropists who happen to be disabled. 	
kate	So you just want to see more of yourself on the telly basically?	
rob	Frankly yeah. But it’s still too positive and I don’t think there’s anything wrong…	
kate	I am brave, I am special don’t take it away from me. 	
rob	Can’t we have disabled people who are horrible, really unpleasant individuals, I want to see a bit more of that. What about you Kate?	
Kate	For me I’m going to put in I think probably people who walk fast. I want everyone to go at a slow steady pace just like me.	
rob	Which makes me wonder why on earth you’re choosing to live in London.	
kate	Well exactly. 	
rob	Wouldn’t a small village in Belgium be more up your street?	
kate	No I want to live in London, but can I just put everyone else who lives here into room 101.	
rob	I see. I didn’t realise room 101 had that kind of capacity.	
kate	It does, mine does, mine definitely does. And then also these flipping milk cartons that I can never get the tops off. 	
rob	That’s got nothing to do with your disability. 	
kate	It does because my hands aren’t quite, you know, they’re not very…they’re really small and fiddly and oh it just annoys me. Oh my dear. Anyway we’ve got some lovely guests here…	
rob	Who I think you've just heard sniggering.	
kate	I think they’ve been giggling away.	
rob	Either contemptuously or in support. Was it one or the other?	
nikki	It was in support. 	
rob	Thank you very much.	
nikki	 Of course!	
kate	That there is the voice of the lovely Nikki Fox who I am sure you will all know from shows like How to Look Good Naked. Hi Nikki how are you?	
nikki	Hello. Lovely. I’m good thank you, lovely to be here.	
rob	And we’ve also got Christiane Link. Hello Christiane.	
Christiane	Hi. 	
rob	And you are a London based journalist and self-confessed transport and technology enthusiast. 	
Christiane	I am. 	
kate	Isn’t enthusiast another word for geek?	
Christiane	It is definitely. I am a geek.	
kate	Okay, good. Good as long as we’ve got that clear. 	
Christiane	I like geeks. 	
kate	So you’re both here to help us be chatty and topical. Let’s kick off with Christiane. Other than benefit cuts what have disabled people been protesting about in London this month?	
Christiane	Oh disabled people were protesting against Crossrail because unfortunately seven of the Crossrail stations won’t have step free access which I think is just not okay. They should make them accessible as well as the rest of Crossrail.	
rob	But isn’t that illegal these days anyway to build something new with just no disability access at all? 	
Christiane	That is a very interesting question. The problem is they’re using old stations for the Crossrail network, these are not the stations which will be newly built, these are the old stations which are already there. 	
rob	Oh so this is a bit of a loophole that they’ve been trying to exploit by saying they’re not actually new stations?	
Christiane	Yes. Basically they’re saying officially they don’t touch the stations we just let Crossrail use them, but I’m sure that’s actually not true, and it wouldn’t be so expensive to make the station accessible. And everyone’s talking about sustainability and making our projects sustainable and I think in 2013 or even then 2019 to have a brand new transport system which has seven stations which are not accessible is not very sustainable. 	
kate	And Crossrail is a project to join up London from one side to another with train stations. Have we not got enough train stations; what is Crossrail?	
Christiane	Crossrail is kind of a high speed network connecting part of south west London and south east London. 	
kate	So why is it important for disabled people to be able to access the transport network? I mean don’t we all have cars now? 	
rob	Kate! What an appalling thing to say. Kate Sustainability Monaghan there ladies and gentlemen.	
kate	Look I love my car, I’ll take it everywhere. 	
Christiane	I think you never tried to drive into Central London it’s not on. And a lot of older people, by the way, can’t use their cars anymore and not every disabled person is driving. And I think if you want to access a lot of areas in life – leisure, go to work, the government wants to put more disabled people into work – so how should they reach basically their offices and workplaces if they can’t use public transport. So if you want to make this country accessible a system like Crossrail must be accessible I think. 	
kate	And, Nikki, you avoid public transport why is that?	
nikki	I’m like you Kate I drive everywhere which is good because it means I’m not an alcoholic; I don’t drink. So yes I drive everywhere and it’s brilliant but like say today, for instance, my PA who I have with me for work occasions is on holiday, having a little sunbathe right now, and so I had to get here and I had to get here by cab, accessible cab and I live about 50 minutes away so it’s really quite pricey, and it would have been great if I could have hopped on at my local train station. But I actually did that journey from my last Radio 5 Live doc and I couldn’t have done it if I wasn’t with somebody. Some of my work is going to be taking place at the new BBC studios in Manchester so I’m going to go there. I can drive but it is about four hours and I wanted to get a train because I thought I’ll try it out, I’ll get a train and see what it’s like. And they wouldn’t even let me book the train because I was in a four wheeled mobility scooter. They said to me you’ve got to be in a three wheeled mobility scooter. I said I’ve got a three wheeled mobility scooter and it’s called the Rascal 600 Turbo that’ll give you an idea of the size. 	
rob	So it’s called a rascal.	
kate	A rascal…	
nikki	600 Turbo. I mean it’s mahoosive. 	
rob	Can you get one that’s also called a pest, and nuisance?	
nikki	A pain in the bum.	
rob	Yeah.	
Christiane	They were only scared that you are quicker than the train. 	
nikki	Well there we go you see Christiane. 	
rob	And have you noticed how when you look at a Transport for London map of the tube it actually looks like there are disabled ghettos because the stops that are disability accessible have got a little round wheelchair sticker on them haven’t they and there’s nothing in Central London at all except Kings Cross. 	
kate	You can travel from one end of London to the other without problem…	
rob	But you can’t stop in the important bit. 	
kate	But you can’t go in the middle. 	
rob	And then right out in the east in Docklands there are wheelchair stickers everywhere so it’s like do I have to live in Canning Town, is this really essential? This is what you're trying to make me do.	
Christiane	That’s exactly the reason why I moved from Ealing to south east London at one point when I decided to stay in London the first thing I thought is okay I have to move house because to live in West London is just a no-go area for me. If I want to use public transport I have to move to the south east to be able to use the Jubilee Line. 	
rob	And to the great joy of Londoners and to the utter indifference of everybody else listening, and we should probably point out that it looks like the protestors are going to get their way doesn’t it? 	
Christiane	Well we’ll see. We still don’t have the okay from the Department for Transport saying they are funding the additional stations which are to be made accessible. Boris Johnson more or less promised that Crossrail will be accessible but he is not the guy with the money. He needs agreement from the department from Transport but they have another five years. So I’m personally very optimistic that this is going to work, it’s just a matter of will. And within the budget it’s only 0.2%. Crossrail costs £14.5 billion and to make them more…	
rob	So this is penny change out of their budget really. But that wasn’t the only transport victory we should also point out that for disabled people this month. A chap called Doug Paulley took First Bus Group to court after a pushchair in the wheelchair space left him unable to board. Now the company had to pay Paulley – check this – five and a half grand and were given six months to change their first come first served policy. His lawyer described the result as a breakthrough. Surely cases like this, Nikki, this has got to stop you shying away from public transport even with the Rascal?	
nikki	It has hasn’t it? I’ve just got to bite the bullet. Shall I tell you – this is my idea okay, guys, I’m giving it to you first. 	
kate	Okay. For free? 	
nikki	For free. 	
kate	Excellent.	
nikki	Everything I do is for free. I’m not at that stage yet actually. I think we should challenge Boris Johnson – I’ve been after doing this for ages, right – to sit on my spare mobility scooter, I’ll even give him the Rascal 600 Turbo, me and Boris can get out there in London on public transport and he can see for himself what it’s like. 	
rob	The gauntlet has been laid down.	
nikki	And we’ll do a little challenge. Come on, Boris, can you imagine little blond hair blowing in the wind on our little matching mobility scooters.	
rob	And we know the Mayor of London does like… 	
kate	Would be a sight to behold. 	
rob	…to listen to the Ouch Talk Show.	
nikki	 Well hello, Boris, do it, do it babe it would be good fun. And when I spoke to Maria Miller who was the minister for disabled people, she was saying before the Paralympics that she had tested out the route. And I said to her, “Did you test out that route with a disabled person?” And she said, “Oh no, no.” And I was like, “Would you like me to go with you, babe?” 	
kate	I’m pretty sure I think Boris would be pretty up for that myself, I think he’s game for a laugh isn’t he? 	
nikki	Let’s get on it like a bullet.	
rob	Game for a laugh. I hate the way we have to describe our mayor as being some sort of game show contestant but hey ho. 	
nikki	It’s true though, it’s true.	
Christiane	When I came here this morning I had actually a twin buggy in a bus and the mother was arguing with the bus driver if she’s able to get on the bus and the buggy didn’t even fit through the door. So there is an issue with buggies. 	
rob	Challenges lay ahead. 	
kate	Indeed.	
rob	Now this is the part of the programme where I know all of you are thinking: Rob, what do you think about theme park queues? Well do not fear we’re about to address this. So it’s long been said that being able to skip these massive queues at Disneyworld, Disneyland is a major benefit of being disabled. Disney has announced that it’s all going to stop. So what’s going on here? 	
Kate	No. Oh my gosh.	
rob	Can you feel the sadness?	
kate	Can I just say this is the only benefit I have of my disability. The only good thing about my disability is skipping the queues at Disney. It is one joy I have in life and now they are ripping it away from me. They are taking my only joy away. 	
rob	Oh right, calm down.	
kate	Why would somebody do this to me?	
rob	How often do you go to Disney?	
kate	I have an annual pass to Disneyland Paris. I love it and I live right next to St. Pancras. I get on the train, an accessible train, and I get on it at St. Pancras. I then wheel off the other end. I’m straight in the park at Disney – it is the best thing in life! And they are taking it away from me, Rob.	
rob	So let’s…	
kate	Do you not understand the pain of this?	
rob	…just bypass Kate’s entirely neutral and disinterested stance for a moment, and can either of you two enlighten us as to why, what’s actually going on here, why are Disney stopping this? 	
nikki	This is because… Now listen, I’ve only ever been on the vampire ride, Kate, that is as far…	
kate	You are missing out, Nikki.	
nikki	…as the fox has gone. I’m terrified. I was saying to Christiane I’m useless. But if you were to be a Disneyland regular you were able to skip the queues and you were able to take about six people with you.	
kate	Yep. 	
nikki	Fabulous.	
kate	Amazing.	
nikki	Disney are changing the rules because they uncovered the fact that wealthy New Yorkers were paying disabled people to go with them and skip the queues. 	
kate	I love this. If I’d known this this is a whole new entire income stream for me. 	
rob	How much were they charging?	
nikki	Those quiet disabled months you could have charged – get this babes - £649 a day to be a disabled black market Disney guide. Not only would I love that title…	
rob	Amazing!	
nikki	“What did you do?” “Oh I was a disabled black market Disney guide.” Now in TV, I was telling Kate it does get a little bit quiet over the summer months when everyone goes on holiday, if I’d known…	
rob	Rubbish! I don’t see Brucey down the labour exchange. 	
nikki	Well it does for me baby. But if I’d known £649 a day.	
kate	I know, I know, exactly. 	
nikki	Hello!	
kate	This is my dream. I would literally spend my whole year in Disneyland…	
rob	I think in fact we should all tender…	
kate	…helping people out.	
rob	…our resignations immediately and head to Paris to cash up on this before the laws are actually implemented. Have we got a little bit of time left?	
nikki	We haven’t got much time, babe, I think they’re changing them in October – 9th October.	
rob	Right, well that was show 101. We have to leave you now.	
nikki	We’re off.	
rob	Eurostar.	
kate	I mean what else do we get? So we can be paid to help other people skip the queues is there anything else in life that we, as disabled people, get preferential treatment over that we can charge out, you know, to rich people who want it? The only thing I can think of is that we get to board the plane first. 	
rob	And why would you want to do that? I want to be the last one on. 	
Christiane	And leave the plane last so that’s not really…	
nikki	It’s swings and roundabouts.	
kate	Exactly. Is there anything else? 	
nikki	Buy one, get one free gig tickets. I mean we do get quite nice little platforms.	
rob	Cinema, buy one get one free yeah. The disabled platform at Glastonbury is extremely useful. 	
nikki	And we were at a concert, Ben Howard I think it was, my sister who’s also disabled and a lot less… Well she’s more straight to the point than me shall we say. 	
Kate	More than you? Wowzer!	
nikki	Wowzers! And three non-disabled people shouted out, “Oh let us sit with you, let us come up onto your platform?” My sister was like, “Naff off!”	
rob	Surely she should have said, “It’ll cost you.” 	
kate	Should have said, “A tenner a time and you can have it.” 	
nikki	In hindsight yeah. 	
rob	Is there anything else though? I can’t imagine… There are lots of things that I profit from like having a Freedom Pass and a disabled railcard but I can’t sell them on for profit.	
kate	I would rather have a queue jump. No I’d rather have a queue jump than a Freedom Pass.	
rob	I find that astonishing. 	
kate	Seriously. 	
rob	You’re prepared to exchange free transport throughout our great city…	
kate	Yeah.	
rob	…for quicker access to a log flume.	
kate	Yeah. For sure. And also all my friends want to come with me. Maybe that’s why they’re my friends. Maybe I don’t have loyal friends.	
rob	Have you been getting used?	
kate	Yeah maybe they just want me for my queue jump and now if that is taken away from me that’ll be it. 	
nikki	Oh yeah now this is a good thing about being disabled, hello! We went to a Ministry of Sound 90s Discos Anthems; I’ve still got the glo stick on my scooter right now. And we stayed in a pod. They’re basically like this big, massive sort of… You know the things that they put on lorries, they put on ships – containers; they’re like a massive container. And we got there and because I had a disabled one it was – I am not joking – seven times the size of a normal one. There you go!	
kate	That’s true. You do get bigger hotel rooms…	
nikki	It was massive.	
kate	…and things don’t you as well. 	
rob	Massively oversized toilets	
Christiane	If you get one at all then you get a bigger one.	
kate	Comedians are literally going to lose their punch lines for most of their gags because don’t they all say…	
rob	Have you ever seen a disabled comedian who doesn’t do…	
kate	Exactly. 	
rob	…the skipping the queue theme parks.	
kate	Yeah. You just say, “Well I’ve got my blue badge it means I can skip the queue at Disney” and that’s going to be gone. They’re going to be out of a job.	
rob	So thanks a lot Disney, you’re putting hardworking comedians who like plagiarising stale material out of work. I rest my case! So all of us are extremely unhappy but thanks to Disney we’re now slightly more equal than we were before; and aren’t we all just delighted about that? 	
kate	All but me. Anyway, thank you for joining us, Nikki and Christiane. 	
nikki	Thank you. 	
Christiane	Thank you. 	
nikki	Brilliant. 
[Jingle: Ouch talking disability.
Rob: 	Do you think that your depression would have taken a 	different form if you weren’t someone in the public 	eye? 
Ruby:	You’ve got to stop saying stuff like this you really do.
Rob:	Why?
Ruby:	Because people don’t hang themselves because they 	had a TV show on BBC4, this is really feeding the 	stigma. This is like laughing at somebody with cancer 	and saying, “Come on do some Scottish dancing.” 
	bbc.co.uk/ouch.]	
kate	Stand by for a burst of music. 
[Playing music]
That is Rock and Roll Explosion by punk rockers Zombie Crash. You’ll hear in full at the end of the show and that certainly will get you going. 	
rob	Our next guest is one of the few disabled presenters with a steady job on prime time television, and what a depressing sentence that is. We first saw him in the run up to London 2012 when he interviewed David Cameron and Boris Johnson. Boris is all over the show today isn’t he live on Channel 4. 	
kate	I’ve noticed you’ve gone a bit more cockney, Rob, just to try and fit in with Alex I think.	
rob	Fit in with Alex. 	
kate	Yeah anyway... 	
rob	I’m still from the north. 	
kate	…since then his co-presenter…	
alex	I’ve gone slightly more disabled to fit in with this show. I’m going to start complaining about my leg in a minute. 	
rob	You’re disabled enough, promise.	
Kate	I think you’re alright. Anyway, Alex has co-presented three series of topical comedy show, The Last Leg with Adam Hills and Josh Widdicombe. So anyway we’ve already heard from you but a formal welcome to the show, Alex, how’re you doing?	
alex	Thank you. 	
kate	You’ve only been famous for about 12 months, what were you up to before you got your big break?	
alex	Before I joined Channel 4 I used to be a football journalist. Sports journalist mainly concentrating on football doing written and online stuff. I went to uni did a journalism degree then I did the sport because I wanted to get paid to watch football. But after a while working every weekend and Christmas it makes you hate the game. So when I applied to Channel 4 I was just literally applying for any job I could see.	
rob	You actually had football burnout? 	
alex	Yeah it was.	
rob	Fatigue.	
alex	When you’re subbing Scottish division 3 team news on a Friday morning it’s just like ah this is not the beautiful game. 	
kate	Are you saying you didn’t really want to work for Channel 4 you just didn’t want to work at weekends? It was just like whatever comes along to not work at weekends that’s what I’m going to do. 	
alex	Basically that was it. But I almost didn’t apply for Channel 4. I had to send in an audition video when I saw the advert. Also as well the advert said, “Are you disabled?” I thought yeah that’s quite a good start. “Do you have a background in sports?” I was like oh yeah. “Do you have a journalism background?” I was like boom there can’t be that many of us knocking about – this is a niche area, I’ve got half a chance here. 	
rob	And yet you still almost didn’t apply.	
alex	But I still almost didn’t apply.	
rob	Was that just pure laziness or you thought the whole project might be awful?	
alex	My friend was filming my 3 minute audition video and he couldn’t do it one of the days. And he went, “Look I can do it Tuesday afternoon” and the deadline was the Tuesday night. And I was like, “I don’t know whether I can be bothered, I don’t even know if the script is that funny” because I’d written like a funny script. And in the end I just said I’d do it anyway. It was just on his lunch break when he filmed it for me. But if he’d have said, “I’m not free” then I never would have applied. 	
kate	Was there anything about the disability aspect that put you off and you thought actually maybe I don’t want to be pigeon-holed in that way so I just want to stay as a mainstream sports reporter?	
alex	Do you know what it’s quite a shame because that was November 2010 and in March 2010, so it was not that long before, I did a report for the company I was working for on the Paralympics GB Talent Days; and I went along and tried a load of sports and I got talent spotted to go into the rifle shooting team. And then I was put on the squad. And my company supported me all the way through. In the end I quit. And the reason I quit is because actually I’ve always grown up… I’ve never had any other disabled mates, there weren’t any disabled people at my secondary school, so it was quite weird to suddenly find myself pigeon-holing myself as disabled. It’s really strange and I had a real issue with it. I don’t mind talking about it but I had to go into like counselling and all sorts.	
kate	So what made you go into counselling? 	
alex	Do you know what I suddenly became very self-conscious. So what was I in 20… I was like 26 never felt self-conscious before but until I was pigeon-holing myself in disabled competition.	
kate	So when you were surrounded by other disabled people you suddenly felt self-conscious rather than when you were growing up in mainstream?	
alex	Yeah. And that’s a really strange way to go about it. Like my mum and dad couldn’t get their heads round it, they were like, “Well why now, you’re 26, you’ve gone through your whole life and then now you’re suddenly starting to get conscious.” I really was. But in fact actually that whole process I went through is the best thing that’s ever happened to me because there’s no way I be doing the job that I do now if I hadn’t have had to go through that to feel completely comfortable with myself. 	
kate	And didn’t you make a documentary about self-image and how you feel about yourself?	
alex	Yeah that was this year and that was more to do with weight loss but the end result of it was is that now is the best that I’ve ever felt about myself. And a couple of times in the documentary I get very emotional when I think back to the place I was at say five years ago with how I felt about myself to where I am now. And the reason I get sad when I thought about it wasn’t because I was ashamed of it or anything like that I just wished I could go back and say to myself, “Hang on a minute, mate, you’re alright here.”	
kate	So what actually helped, what was the turning point for you? 	
alex	It started with the counselling and doing the television stuff has helped infinitely and I’d probably say that the Paralympics that was probably the best part of it because I kind of got inspired by it as well. But doing our show it was almost like you do therapy on telly, I’m talking about my leg, I’m talking all manner of stuff and having fun with it and people were embracing it and they were saying how great it was, and that was weird. It was therapy on the sofa albeit joined by Josh and then with Adam hosting. 	
rob	And the weight loss thing is quite interesting as well because often you see people who have lost a dramatic amount of weight and you can look at them and say yeah I can tell you used to be a bit overweight. But I’m looking at you you don’t look like someone who’s ever been overweight in your life. 	
alex	Oh mate I was porky. 	
rob	Well no you were sitting in football ground eating pies I imagine most of the time.	
alex	With my legs I started playing football when I was a teenager like really getting into it, but it caused all manner of problems with my prosthetic and with my disabilities, kind of my mobility wasn’t good and I made it worse by playing football, and I had to have loads of operations towards my late teens. And I got really fat because I couldn’t use crutches so I’d just kind of go in the wheelchair for four months whilst my legs healed. And all I did was eat and play FIFA and stuff like that and all manner…	
kate	I did exactly the same thing.	
alex	…which is actually not too dissimilar.	
kate	Yeah. When I first got diagnosed I used to be really sporty and then about 16/17 just it all went away and I just sat at home and ate and ate and ate everything in sight.	
rob	I think it’s something to do with the physical posture. Obviously I’m not a wheelchair user myself but when I see people I just think look at your lap and look at the chair that’s like the exact dimensions of a tea tray. I could just have a tray of food on me all the time and never stop. I mean I don’t know am I talking complete nonsense. 	
alex	No. 	
rob	You’re built for eating when you're sitting in a wheelchair.	
kate	You are talking such rubbish, Rob Crossan, as ever.	
rob	Get your average tea tray full of a few sausage rolls, bit of cake, can of iron brew.	
kate	I don’t know the last time you’ve been in a wheelchair but that is not…	
rob	Are you saying you can’t…	
kate	No.	
rob	When you’re in your wheelchair you could fit a tea tray full of food on your lap?	
kate	No. My wheelchair’s quite compact, I’m quite small now. I don’t need that. So no. Pipe down, Crossan. Anyway, back to you, Alex.	
alex	Yeah back to me, I’m the guest here mate! 	
kate	Let’s talk about The Last Leg. I think we’ve actually got a clip here.
[Playing clip: And the thing is you don’t have to look that far to find someone affected by a dodgy ATOS assessment or disability assessment in any sense. Alex, you’ve had it.
Alex is disabled.
No I know but it’s just like I got a letter through so like in six months they’re going to reassess me because my condition might improve. I think I might have got the wrong end of the stick because I’ve been getting excited. I’ve been going out buying gloves all week. Is that not what it means?]	
alex	Good gags.	
rob	So it’s a very different sort of show isn’t it to a lot of the kind of worthy slightly dull, disabled programming of the past. What else was it that made people take to their hearts? 	
alex		
rob	But people obviously like that that sense of levity that the show brings as well as the serious stuff. I mean is that what helped, do you think, it become such a success?	
alex	Yeah definitely. The way we started in the Paralympics was very different kind of show to what it is now obviously. Every day what I loved about Last Leg during the Paralympics is, first and foremost, like people remember it for the jokes which is great. But before that it was a celebration of how well things had gone during the day. And it wasn’t always just British athletes but it was talking about how good the sport was first and foremost. And that’s what I loved about it because it wasn’t patronising or anything like that. But then obviously with the kind of is it okay# and the fact that you had myself and Adam there happy to talk about all manner of stuff it kind of enabled us to go places which, I must say, I’ve not seen on television before. What I love as well is even though we were taking the mickey a little bit and it was jokes but there was always an innocence to it all the time it was never offensive. I mean people say it’s quite hard, how do you know what’s offensive and what’s not. If you say something and you think to yourself that’s offensive, then chances are you’re going to say something offensive.  	
rob	And there was me thinking it was going to be so convoluted. It seems quite simple, it makes sense to me anyway. 	
kate	How far can you push things and where do you think you draw the line especially with the is it okay# and how do you decide?	
alex	I suppose in terms of what you can and can’t say to disabled people when you know them I think it’s the same as anybody, it’s anything goes. When you know somebody because you know somebody as a person so you know what you can take the mickey out of them for whether it’s their hair or anything like that, or their ex’s – mates know the line. And that’s the same with any disabled person whether you're taking the mickey out of their disability or not. But don’t go up to a disabled man on the street that you don’t know and then start laying into him, not physically obviously, but with jokes and stuff.	
rob	But this wasn’t this is it okay you actually had saying is it alright for me to hit a disabled person because they’re annoying me. 	
Alex	Yeah that is it.	
Rob	And what was your response to that?	
alex	Well first of all I was upset because that was sent in by my mum. No it wasn’t! You’ve got to do these things with reason. Apply some common sense to it and you should be okay. But my favourite is it okay that we had during the Paralympics was someone said, “Is it okay to chop my right hand off so I can go to the Rio Paralympics?” And it was like there’s more to it than that. You can’t just rock up to Rio airport show your right hand missing and go, “So what sport do I get?” You have to train and stuff like that. 	
kate	Although isn’t that what you did with the rifle team, you just kind of rocked up and…	
alex	Do you know what? I regret not following it through a little bit. Obviously now with the way my career’s gone I wouldn’t have had time for it anyway but I look back now and rifle shooting is the best I have ever been at one single thing straight away. You may look at me on television and think this guy’s slick, he’s good. He’s taken to this really quickly.	
kate	That’s exactly what I thought yeah. 	
alex	It’s been a year. He’s smooth. But no rifle shooting is the best I’ve ever been at anything.	
rob	And it seems that you can enlarge what is okay if you’re doing two things like you do on The Last Leg; a) you’re being quite playful about it; and b) you’re doing it with an air of confidence and swagger, there’s no victimhood about it. And I think if you’re talking in that way about disability it seems that you're able to maybe take a few more chances and be a bit edgier than if you were being rather solemn about it. 	
alex	Definitely. And as well me and Adam are disabled so we could go basically where we wanted. But for Josh, I don’t think Josh gets enough credit for what he did during the Paralympics because for him as a fairly kind of young comedian as well, going into that sort of atmosphere making the jokes and being in that banter which me and Adam had, it’s a very difficult job. And I think he found… What I love about our shows is we found a chemistry very quickly, and Josh knows the line as well. And he’s not disabled, he just knows the line and that’s why it works. We couldn’t have had somebody going off too far, do you know what I mean?	
rob	But you did have some extremely difficult subject matters to cover. The most obvious one being the case of Oscar Pistorius. And it seems that quite a lot of people contacted the show to say how pleased they were with how you handled that. 	
alex	It’s the most we’ve ever had on any subject, the most tweets we’ve ever had on any subject. Because obviously people saw what we did in the Paralympics and they must have thought they’re going to go to town on him here. And it was never really going to be the case because you didn’t know all the subjects of the case. There are legal matters as well. I’ve never had so many lawyers… I’ve never had a lawyer brief me before going on to the show as much as what they did…	
rob	It can kill the humour element slightly. 	
alex	Yeah and in the end it was just like, “So can I say this?” “No.” “Can I say this?” “No.” “Shall I say that?” “No.” What I liked about it is that we never did jokes on the subject but there were funny questions that arose out of the subject such as would he be allowed his legs in prison, and then that got me and Adam into a conversation about what situations we have our legs on and off; do I have my leg on in the shower and stuff like that. And that’s what I was happy to do because it’s not taking the mickey out of what is an absolute tragedy but…	
kate	And we need to make clear that we’re talking about Oscar Pistorius allegedly shooting his girlfriend at the time.	
alex	Not the tantrum he threw when he lost the 200m to Alan Oliveira.	
rob	We’re perfectly entitled to say whatever we want about that. 	
alex	Something else as well just on the Paralympic sprinting; the amputees sprinting categories in the Paralympics at the moment are incredible. I’ve never seen Paralympic sport raised to such a level where you’ve got literally like five or six people who go into a race that can win. Like I went to the anniversary games you’ve got Johnny Peacock and Richard Brown and Alan Oliveira and it’s just like it’s real elite sport, it’s brilliant and that’s the best thing for the Paralympics.	
kate	They are all coming through as role models for young people now. Do you think you’re coming through as a role model and somebody for young disabled people to look up to?	
alex	Quite a lot of times when I go to like charity events and I get a lot of tweets and it’s from disabled people saying that they look up to me and I’m just like, “Prrh you must be devoid of role models if you’ve turned to me.” But it’s nice and it’s great because I didn’t have anybody like that so much when I was younger. I mean when I was like 11 or 12 I mean I didn’t really know that many disabled people on television, there were very few. The only people really like Ade and Tanni Grey and people like that they were the ones who you’d look up to,
 but they’re weren’t the role models now like people like Johnny Peacock and stuff like that. The Paralympics has borne out these heroes. And for people when they say to me you’re a bit of a role model it’s great it’s the best thing, it’s the best compliment I could be paid, obviously other than that I’m funny and also fairly good looking as well, which is a nice compliment.	
rob	Do you have a role model yourself, do you have one.	
alex	What?	
rob	Do you have a role model?	
alex	Mine are footballers though. They’re not disabled role models. My disabled role model is Alex Zanardi, he’s the Italian hand cyclist. And the reason is because he just like – for people who don’t know his story – he was a Formula One driver then he went into another form of motor racing, lost both his legs at the knee in the crash and then he went on to win two gold medals in hand cycling at the Paralympics last year. And for me it just kind of I don’t know it’s very rare now, I’m 29 and I thought I knew all I could about my disability and how I feel about it. And then I did an interview with him at Brands Hatch, as a preview piece for Channel 4, and the way he spoke about disability I’ve never heard anybody who has gone through such, I don’t know, such like a trauma but he’s got such a brilliant attitude towards it. I mean it made me feel bad, I mean I moan about blisters. Like the other day I was saying to my missus it’s like man flu like leg blisters for me are like man flu, it’s like you blow it all out of proportion and you go on about it for ages until no-one really cares. And I was moaning about that. And it made me feel quite humble.	
rob	Well Last Leg is back in January 2014 and so we’d like to say to you, Alex ‘Golden Shot’ Brooker, thank you ever so much for your time. 	
alex	Thank you. Cheers, thank you.	
kate	Thanks. 
[Jingle: Ouch talking disability. I’d put myself on a dating site once and I didn’t mention that I had a disability and I got loads and loads of emails asking for dates and stuff. Obviously I had to tell them I had a disability and then it was like no more emails. I put myself on as having a disability and I just didn’t get any emails so I think it is very image orientated. bbc.co.uk/ouch.]	
rob	Francesca Hardwick, Michael Gilbert and Kevin Davies are all names you may have heard in the headlines in recent years. They all died as a result of what is now thought to have been sustained abuse due to being disabled – a disability hate crime. 	
kate	Crimes aggravated by disability prejudice are said to be under reported but it’s estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of victims who remain silent. 	
rob	And here to tell us more are Katharine Quarmby, author of the 2011 book ‘Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People’; and Mike Smith, director of Real Answers – a disability led charity in London’s Tower Hamlets and co-author of two reports on disability hate crime for the Equality and Human rights Commission. Hello to you both. 	
mike	Hello.	
Katharine	Hello.	
kate	Let’s start this off by hearing from someone who has experienced this problem. Neil has learning difficulties; he regularly gets called spastic and retard because of how he looks and speaks. In this clip he talks about when everything came to a head.
[Playing clip: I was indoors and I heard them bang, bang, knock, knock and I thought bloody hell. When I opened my front door, no-one there. I went, “Who is it?” And suddenly this boy came over the fence screaming past me saying, “What do you want, what do you want” and all that bloody accusing me of this and accusing that. And I sort of forced the door shut because he was trying to get in. It was about 11 o’clock, quarter past, knock on the door all of a sudden this bloke come round the corner from out of sight, massive bloke he was, he knocked seven bells out of me. Knocked me to the ground my glasses everything.] 	
kate	Now Neil does have learning difficulties and what I’d quite like to know is, Katharine, is it more likely that somebody with learning difficulties is going to be a victim of this kind of crime?	
katharine	As opposed to other disabled people?	
kate	As opposed to a wheelchair user or visually impaired person yeah.	
katharine	I mean it does seem from the statistics we’ve got so far it does seem that people with learning difficulties do seem to be targeted for longer periods. And in some ways one might also say groomed by so-called friends and this has come to be called ‘mate crime’ which is not a very nice term, but kind of describes people being targeted by so-called friends. Having said that wheelchair users also get attacked a lot so do people with autism and so on. So we don’t really know because the statistics are still being compiled but I do think that people with learning difficulties get targeted in a particular kind of way.	
kate	And Mike what’s been your experience of this? 	
mike	Okay. So when we did the research on this we found that actually there just wasn’t enough evidence to get a clear pattern. Because forces aren’t recording different impairment types probably. As well as learning disability people with mental health conditions often get targeted but in fact there’s a really wide spectrum and people with all kinds of impairments are targeted. And particularly people with dual equality strands, for example, you’re black and you’re disabled or you’re gay and you’re disabled were often particularly sought out for targeting. What we do know though is that the mass of under reporting clearly doesn’t tell a true picture. And forces like the Metropolitan Police who have been doing quite a lot of the work to get the reporting numbers up are actually seeing a much broader range of impairment types coming through on increased reporting. So I think actually the answer is we need to do more work to find out really what the real spread is. 	
rob	Has there been much research as to why this idea of mate crime exists; what prompts an able-bodied person to befriend a person with a disability and then abuse or exploit them either mentally or physically or both. Do you have any insight into this? 	
katharine	I mean we’re still waiting for the first perpetrator analysis work to be published in fact.	
rob	What’s your opinion though, what would you say it could possibly be down to? 	
katharine	Mate crime specifically?	
rob	Yes.	
katharine	Well in the cases that I looked at in Scapegoats, and obviously that was just a small number of cases you saw people being targeted, I mean often actually men being targeted by women, which is quite unusual for hate crime. So it wasn’t the same as other forms of hate crime. And it would start off as one form of crime and evolve over time which was unusual as well. So you might start off targeting someone perhaps for money; and this is something that Mike and his team also identified at the Equality Commission, kind of cuckoo crimes I think you called it, where you’d start off robbing someone of medication and money and that would evolve into something much more sinister over time. So the motivation itself can vary over time. 	
rob	I know this is something Kate’s got experience of, we were talking about it before we started recording this show today, and I thought it was an incredible and shocking story that you told, Kate.	
Kate	Yeah it was a friend of mine who started university. And he was put into a flat with people, and he has a form of autism, and it started by them saying to him “I think you should give us a tenner, let’s go down to the cashpoint.” And it turned into every single day they were walking him to the cashpoint and getting him to get out twenty quid and they said we need it for you to live here with us. We need it for alcohol it’s your share of the food bill. And eventually his parents found out and they looked at his bank statement and every day he was being taken advantage of for ten, twenty, thirty quid at a time. And it started out with them just trying it out and seeing what happened and it turned into this kind of sustained theft. And I just did not know what to do. What would…	
rob	But they got away with it didn’t they, nothing ever happened?	
kate	As far as I know yeah. But what should we be doing about this? 	
mike	Before we come to what do we do, can I just pick up on the general point about mate crime which is whilst it’s a really helpful term for some people to understand what’s happening to them and to relate to what’s happening as a disability hate crime, I think it’s quite important for people at large to, or policymakers in particular, not to focus on that terminology because it kind of implies that some disabled people are just not capable of making friends on their own. And the last thing I want is a protective state coming over and mollycoddling everyone. And there are other kinds of crime whether it be sexual abuse crime or targeting immigrant workers in some ways. It’s about power politics and about who’s able to influence power and effect and who’s on the other side. And there are lots of situations of that in different forms of crime. I just think it’s important to get the perspective right.	
kate	It is. But as somebody who looked onto this and understood it was happening what steps should we be taking from the outside to try and do something about it? 	
mike	Okay. Well there’s a whole range of things you can do. For example, you can help the individual your friend understand what’s happening to them because lots of people just didn’t realise that what was happening to them was hate crime; they just thought it was part of the day to day reality of living life as a disabled person. You can help them report it to the police; there are third party hate crime reporting schemes all around the country. There are other organisations, there are national phone lines that you can do to report them. If you’re really concerned about somebody’s safety you can help report it to Social Services as well – there’s a whole range of things but people do need to take action. 	
kate	Let’s go back to Neil’s story. Let’s hear another clip that we found particularly moving.
[Playing clip: I do have the odd minor flashback. Sometimes I’ll be sitting down and I just go in a trance and think of all the bloody things that happened to me back. Is this really me? Is this happening to me? Why is it happening to me?]
It’s important for us to tell you that Neil is in a safe and a better place now. And his story comes from Mencap’s YouTube channel so if you want to see the video in full there will be a link to it from bbc.co.uk/ouch. Katharine, that is a clip of Neil sounding like he can’t quite understand what’s happened to him. Is that an experience that’s common?	
katharine	I think so because it is very hard to comprehend why you would be targeted in that way. And I think the successful outcome is: 1) to feel safe; and 2) to feel that you’ve got some kind of justice. And unfortunately, sadly, that is happening less and less at the moment. The successful hate crime prosecutions fell for the last year for which we’ve got figures available. So in fact if you go and report now, and more and more disabled people are reporting, you’re less and less likely to be a satisfactory outcome. The reason why I think police are so confused about disability hate crime still, and to a certain extent domestic violence crimes against women, is that they happen in the home when so-called carers steal from them or abuse them or so-called friends groom them, you know maybe ‘grooming’ is a better word as Mike said earlier with mate crime maybe we need to use the word grooming more. So I think that’s why we’re getting so much confusion about what is a disability hate crime and that’s where police still aren’t actually taking those cases forward and getting successful prosecutions. 	
rob	The National Crime Survey for 2012 it recorded 65,000 disability hate crimes – 65,000, yet only 1700 were reported to police and there were only 621 prosecutions. Now on the face of it that doesn’t sound very successful. Mike?	
mike	On those numbers what they’re basically saying is that 34 out of 35 crimes don’t get reported because people either think that it won’t be responded or it can’t be responded and that’s borne out time and time again by the wider criminal justice system failing to recognise what’s happening as hate crime, failing to investigate it failing to prosecute it as such . And even when it is prosecuted failing to get what’s called Section 148  uplifts the the penalty for disability hate crime. So the whole system at the moment is working in the way that doesn’t give disabled people confidence to report in the first place because they’re just putting themselves potentially in an even more vulnerable position by making a big deal about it. 	
kate	So what can be done to bring the disability hate crime figures down?	
rob	This does all seem very irredeemably grim.	
kate	It does.	
rob	Is there any hope out there; can you help us on this level?	
mike	Bizarrely I would rather see the numbers go up to start with so at least it would focus the authorities’ attention that this is a real problem and that they would appropriately apply resources and attention.	
kate	Labour has spoken about this problem recently and I know the government have done in the past as well; is this something that the government need to be taking charge of?	
mike	The thing with this is it’s a really, really complex problem. It’s ingrained in the way that society understands and values disabled people in the first place and it’s going to take a long time to change the outcomes. When we did our report, the ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’ report, in 2011 and one year later the ‘Out in the Open’ report, we came up with a list of about 40 or 50 recommendations for central government, for national organisations and for local areas as well. And aligned to that on the EHRC website is the action plans that about 40 or 50 national organisations published to say this is what we are going to do about this over the next few years. The important thing is that everyone needs to read those and understand what they are so when they’re talking to the local politicians or the local council people they can say, “Well hold on you committed to do this thing, to challenge this problem…”	
kate	What has the government actually said because we’re not all going to be able to read the report so what are we going to be asking our politicians to do?	
mike	Well the Law Commission are currently doing a review on whether the legal framework is correct. And the police are considering education and training to their officers on how to understand and recognise better. Social Service departments are trying to be more joined-up in the way that they recognise and protect and support people to lead equal lives. Housing departments need to think more carefully about where you give disabled people housing to make sure that they’re properly supported and inclusive. And social behaviour teams have to work more  thinkingly  to look for patterns of behaviour and look for repeat victims. So there’s a whole join-up web of solutions that need to happen together. 	
rob	Katharine?	
katharine	I would welcome the proposal by the Labour party to bring in a specific offence. The Disability Hate Crime Network, of which I’m one of the co-ordinators, we just submitted to the Law Commission saying that we welcome that I’d like to see aggravated offences in the same way in which we have aggravated offences for racial crimes; I’d like to see the same ones for disability. And now I think there’s room for an incitement offence, incitement for disability hatred. I think those things are now… The time the right for those. But we need all those other things that Mike just talked about as well.	
rob	Well it’s a fascinating topic and an extremely distressing one. I thank you so much for your insights into this, both Katharine and Mike.	
mike	Thank you.
[Jingle: Ouch!]	
kate	So that’s all folks. Thanks for listening to episode 101. And don’t forget to tell your friends about the brilliance of the Ouch Talk Show. You could even share the link on Facebook and Twitter – what a novel idea! 	
rob	Because I do believe the internet is going to be big. 	
kate	One day, one day.	
rob	This is my prediction. 	
kate	As always, big thanks to the team behind the scenes; Damon Rose, studio manager Phil Hutchenson, and producer Emma Tracey. 	
rob	And as usual let’s finish with some music. This month’s Zombie Crash, they’re yet another learning disabled punk band from Brighton – what is going on down there with learning disabled bands, there’s literally four that I can think of. But anyway, they’re just back from touring the UK where they shared the bill with a mix of disabled and non-disabled bands. This track, from their 2011 album No Mercy, it’s called Rock and Roll Explosion.
Goodbye.	
kate	Goodbye. 
[Playing music]